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IMAGE: Trembath-Reichert running the winch for the CTD water sampler, which was used to bring fluids up to the ship from the bottom of the ocean. view more
Credit: Ben Tully
The subseafloor constitutes one of the largest and most understudied ecosystems on Earth. While it is known that life survives deep down in the fluids, rocks, and sediments that make up the seafloor, scientists know very little about the conditions and energy needed to sustain that life.
An interdisciplinary research team, led from ASU and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), sought to learn more about this ecosystem and the microbes that exist in the subseafloor. The results of their findings were recently published in
In the deep sea, subsurface microbes are plentiful and hungry
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Researcher Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert is pictured operating the winch for the CTD water sampler, which was used to pump fluids back up to the research vessel from the Atlantic seafloor.
Photo by Ben Tully
April 28 (UPI) Boreholes drilled deep into the floor of the Atlantic are offering scientists new insights into the microbial communities found thousands of feet beneath the surface of the ocean.
Scientists knew there were microbes living beneath the ocean floor, but until now, little was known about their energy requirements.
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For the study the results of which were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances scientists sent a smorgasbord of snacking options down boreholes drilled into North Pond, a section of the western flank of the mid-Atlantic Ridge.
BBC News
image copyrightChristine Siddoway
image captionAn extraordinary journey: The atomic make-up of small crystals in the rock reveals its origin
It s an unassuming rock, greenish in colour, and just over 4cm in its longest dimension. And yet this little piece of sandstone holds important clues to all our futures.
It was recovered from muds in the deep ocean, far off the coast of modern-day West Antarctica.
The scientists who found it say it shouldn t really have been there.
It s what s called a dropstone, a piece of ice-rafted debris.
It was scraped off the White Continent by a glacier, carried a certain distance in this flowing ice, and then exported and discarded offshore by an iceberg.
Climate change: A small green rock s warning about our future bbc.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bbc.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Boulder, Colo., USA: GSA s dynamic online journal,
Geosphere,
posts articles online regularly. Locations studied this month include the
western Himalaya, the boundary between the southern Coast Ranges and
western Transverse Ranges in California, the northern Sierra Nevada, and
northwest Nepal.
Marine sedimentary records of chemical weathering evolution in the
western Himalaya since 17 Ma
Peng Zhou; Thomas Ireland; Richard W. Murray; Peter D. Clift
Abstract:
The Indus Fan derives sediment from the western Himalaya and Karakoram.
Sediment from International Ocean Discovery Program drill sites in the
eastern part of the fan coupled with data from an industrial well near the
river mouth allow the weathering history of the region since ca. 16 Ma to