Survey sheds light on dark, lost world
Bridie Smith, The Age, January 5, 2012
A lost world of Antarctic creatures that survive not on sun but hydrogen sulphide has been discovered deep beneath the Southern Ocean.
It’s the first time scientists have been able to explore the East Scotia Ridge on the sea floor of the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica.
Reported in the journal PLoS Biology this week, the find includes new species of yeti crab, starfish, barnacles, sea anemones and a pure-white octopus currently unknown to science. “The first survey of these particular vents, in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, has revealed a hot, dark, ‘lost world’ in which whole communities of previously unknown marine organisms thrive,” said Oxford University’s Alex Rogers, who led the research.
The creatures live in a dark world, heated by hydrothermal vents and “black smokers” which exist near volcanically active places where tectonic plates are moving apart. Hot springs and geysers are the land equivalent to deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Without the benefits of the sun, the creatures living in these biologically bountiful areas have evolved to rely on the chemicals such as hydrogen sulphide that are emitted from the vents. The chemicals are then converted into energy.
Evidence of the life-giving qualities of the boiling vents was best illustrated in the way yeti crabs—numbering in the thousands—congregated around the chimneys, where temperatures can reach up to 382 degrees.
Any hour now, the movie director Jim Cameron will attempt, by himself, to sink to the deepest spot on our planet, an ocean trench 6.78 miles below sea level, near the coast of the Philippines.
Only one living person has been there before him. And when that guy arrived where no human had ever been, what he said was…
Well, nothing.
“I’m afraid we didn’t have any profound words that could be written down somewhere,” U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh told the BBC. “It was a quiet moment. And then when we realized that we weren’t going to see anything, we called topside, and told them that we were coming up and started our way back to the surface.”
Investigators Say They've Found Key Clue to Fate of Amelia Earhart
news.blogs.cnn.comInvestigators think they’ve uncovered a key clue that will lead them to solve the mystery of what happened to legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared on a trans-Pacific flight 75 years ago.
Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), said a new enhanced analysis of a photo taken on the Pacific atoll of Nikumaroro, formerly Gardner Island, three months after Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared, may show the landing gear of her Lockheed Electra protruding from a reef.
“We found some really fascinating and compelling evidence,” Gillespie said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday.
“Finding the airplane would be the thing that would make it conclusive,” he said.
Gillespie said the photo was taken by a British survey team in October 1937 and had been seen by Earhart researchers many times. But investigators took a new look at it in 2010 and, when their suspicions were triggered, had the photo checked by U.S. State Department experts. In a blind review, they determined the component in the picture is the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra.
“This is where the airplane went into the drink,” Gillespie said.
On July 2, 75 years to the day after Earhart was last heard from, Gillespie will depart Honolulu on a University of Hawaii research vessel to try to find that plane in the deep waters off a flat reef on Nikumaroro.
I had a random idea for deep sea exploration. I have no idea if this will work or if it’s even possible so if anyone could tell me that would be great.
What if we built a submarine with layered walls and in between each wall would be water. Say we had 4 walls with 3 layers of water in between them, on the outer layer the water would have a pressure close to but below the pressure of the water outside the sub, the middle layer would have less pressure than the outer layer, and the inner layer would have even less than the middle, finally we would have the actual place for people to be in.
I’m thinking with the lessening pressure in each layer the pressure from outside the sub would be reduced to a low enough point that the inner walls could withstand. The walls would have pumps to manage the pressure in each layer with the change in depth.
Again I am no expert on any of this and it was just an idea that popped into my head. Could this work? Is it even possible?
Celebrating the Titanic by Going to See It
nytimes.com“Down, down, down you go, for two and a half hours, jammed with two other people in a tiny submersible, all the way to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean — and all for a glimpse, through a five- or eight-inch porthole, of the ravaged remains of the once-grand ship where the Astors and the Strauses played, dined and, in some cases, died.
The trip is not for the claustrophobic, nor the 99 percent: a two-week cruisethat includes one dive, lasting eight to 10 hours, costs $60,000.
But for fans of the Titanic, no price or privation is too great — especially with the 100th anniversary of the sinking coming up on April 15.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Renata Rojas, a banker in New York City, said of diving more than two miles down to the muddy seabed. “I’ve been obsessed with the Titanic since I was 10 years old.”
With the centennial in mind, at least 80 people are expected to take the plunge down to the wreck, according to the company that runs the trips, Deep Ocean Expeditions.
And while this may be the most extreme observance in the works, there are myriad others: cruise ships will sail to the exact spot in the Atlantic where more than 1,500 Titanic passengers drowned; people will hold Titanic-themed dinner parties, complete with napkins bearing the flag of the White Star Line; and the Titanic Historical Society will hold a gala dinner at which people are welcome to dress as an officer, a crew member or a passenger “to create the ambience of a festive maiden voyage.”
Already, you can buy centennial books, jewelry and other memorabilia galore.
As for an undersea visit to the ship itself, this coming season may be your last chance. Although diving trips have been offered sporadically to paying tourists since the wreck was discovered in 1985, Deep Ocean Expeditions says it plans to discontinue the wreck tours permanently, no doubt to the disappointment of future generations of Titanic devotees and Leonardo DiCaprio fans.”
