Posted on 01/15/2008 12:20:49 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Marine seismologists have overturned an existing theory about the internal workings of deep-sea hydrothermal vents... Until now, the main hypothesis about hydrothermal vents has been that gigantic pressure forces seawater through large faults along the flanks of the ridge. The water, the theory goes, is then heated by coming into proximity with volcanic rock before re-emerging at the middle of the ridges, where the vents are usually clustered... But in the first detailed investigation into vent circulation, a team led by Maya Tolstoy of Columbia University's Earth Observatory in New York City... placed seismometers over a four-square-kilometre area of the East Pacific Rise, about 800 km southwest of Acapulco... The sensors monitored tiny earthquakes that happen 2.5 km below the surface. Around 7,000 of these brief, shallow quakes were recorded in 2003 and 2004 alone... The map drawn by Tolstoy's team shows a downflow 'pipe' that descends about 700 m into the ridge, then fans out for about 200 m. The water then plunges down another 600 metres until it arrives just above a bulge of magma. There, the water is heated and disgorged along the ridge through a dozen vents about two kilometres north of the entrance pipe... Tolstoy's team contends that what appear to be tiny quakes are caused by the physical stress of cold water passing through hot rocks.
(Excerpt) Read more at cosmosmagazine.com ...
Complex plumbing: The vents are found thousands of metres below the sea surface along mid-ocean ridges, which are geologically active underwater mountain ranges. They host a variety of weird creatures that get their energy from metabolising sulphur in the water. Image: Wikimedia
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ooks good in blue...
LOOKS....
*sheesh*
Global Warming is created by S.U.V.s
Submerged Volcanic Vents!
SC, you always find such fascinating stuff!
xcamel, this is a ping for your list (kinda)
The very deepest water is isolated from the rest of the Canada Basin and has likely been there for about 500 yrs. Hence, it is possible to detect the effects of geothermal heating from the sea floor. The bottom layer of water, which has a thickness of up to 1,000 m, is completely mixed, likely by convection from this heating. Small changes in temperature of this well-mixed layer will tell us, for example, how long this heating has been taking place (i.e., how long the water has been there), and whether the geothermal heat is remaining in the deep layer or escaping through the top. Our preliminary temperature measurements over the past decade indicate that most of the heat input is indeed escaping.
Amazing, ain’t it? Heat rises. Science marches on. ;’)
Thanks! Oddly enough, I can’t remember how / where I found this one.
;’)
It also ooks good, but you have to listen really close... ;’)
The Deep, Hot Biosphere
by Thomas Gold
foreword by Freeman Dyson
1992 paper
Robots take scientists into sea depths
Seattle Post-Intelligencer | 7/29/05 | Tom Paulson
Posted on 08/02/2005 3:42:11 PM EDT by LibWhacker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1455539/posts
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