Well inside the Arctic Circle, scientists have found hydrothermal vents farther north than anyone has ever seen before, University of Washington reported on Thursday.
The cluster of five vents -- one towering nearly four stories in height -- are venting water as hot as 300 Centigrade.
Dissolved sulfide minerals that solidify when vent water hits the icy cold of the deep sea have, over the years, accumulated around the vent field in what is one of the most massive hydrothermal sulfide deposits ever found on the seafloor, according to Marvin Lilley, a University of Washington oceanographer.
He's a member of an expedition led by Rolf Pedersen, a geologist of Norway's University of Bergen, aboard the research vessel G.O. Sars.
The vents are located at 73 degrees north on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway. That's nearly 200 kms from the previous northernmost vents found during a 2005 expedition, also led by Pedersen. Other scientists have detected plumes of water from hydrothermal vents even farther north but have been unable to
find the vent fields on the seafloor to image and sample them.
"We hadn't expected a lot of active venting on ultra-slow spreading ridges," Lilley said. "Given the massive sulfide deposit, the vent field must surely have been active for many thousands of years," he said.
The area around the vents was alive with microorganisms and animals. Preliminary observations suggest that the ecosystem around these Arctic vents is diverse and appears to be unique, unlike the vent communities observed elsewhere.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article