Posted on 08/04/2008 5:58:31 PM PDT by krb
Aug. 4, 2008 -- Jets of searingly hot water spewing up from the ocean floor have been discovered in a far-northern zone of the Arctic Ocean, Swiss-based scientists announced Monday.
The so-called "black smokers" were found 73 degrees north, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway, in the coldest waters yet for a phenomenon first observed around the Galagapos islands in 1977.
The earth's plumbing system of hydrothermal vents contain their own, unique ecosystems given the absence of sunlight at depths, in this case, of 7,874 feet, with vinegar-like water attaining temperatures of up to 752 degrees Fahrenheit.
A team from Norway's University of Bergen and the Lausanne-based Swiss Federal Institute of Technology found the vents on an expedition in June, with the results published on the Swiss polytechnic's Web site.
These geo-thermal currents are found on undersea, geologically active "mountain ranges" -- formed from mighty tectonic plates that push into each other and create spines along the ocean floor.
Hydrothermal vents have been called "black smokers" for the bilious clouds of material emitted from their chimneys.
Scientists are discovering new weird, resilient microbial life forms that live in these clusters, feeding off flecks of gold and other minerals from Earth's interior.
First thing that came to my mind...
Aha! So we should blame the earth itself for melting ice! Hey, maybe the sun has something to do with warming too?
Now that's some global warming.
LOL.
Yeah, as others have noted before, sometimes these things just write themselves.
The AP prefers the term “African-American smokers”.
Ah yes but do the black smokers contain menthol?
If so the DEA may exempt them from prohibition.
No, it's "African-American nicotine pollution addicts".
If they're anything like Obambi, there's no 'American' there.
Maybe 'African-Socialist smokers.'
Erhh...This couldn’t be causing any ice to melt, could it?
what would Judge Thomas Jones say?
if we dump oil will the earth stop venting? (sarcasm)
That kind is a little different. It spews hot air.
Nobody bothers to fact check any more. The mid ocean ridges are spreading zones not subduction zones. /idiots.
Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.
The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.
Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.
But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished.
What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from Earth's mantle onto the ocean floor.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080625/sc_afp/sciencegeologyoceansvolcano
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From Ohio State University News, Dec 2007...
EARTH'S HEAT ADDS TO CLIMATE CHANGE TO MELT GREENLAND ICE
COLUMBUS , Ohio -- Scientists have discovered what they think may be another reason why Greenland 's ice is melting: a thin spot in Earth's crust is enabling underground magma to heat the ice.
They have found at least one hotspot in the northeast corner of Greenland -- just below a site where an ice stream was recently discovered.
The researchers don't yet know how warm the hotspot is. But if it is warm enough to melt the ice above it even a little, it could be lubricating the base of the ice sheet and enabling the ice to slide more rapidly out to sea.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/hotgreen.htm
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Movie: "The Land That Time Forgot"
"Negotiating an underwater tunnel [beneath the ice] to gain the island's interior, those aboard U-33 are amazed to discover a tropical prehistoric world kept warm by volcanic forces. Here dinosaurs that should be long extinct live and roam, as do a curious race of humanoid savages that appear to exhibit all the various phases of Man's evolutionary development. To survive long enough to repair and replenish the U-boat, wartime enemies must put aside their differences and cooperate with one another. But not everyone is playing from the Kumbaya songbook... The Land That Time Forgot is a thoroughly old fashioned sci-fi/fantasy adventure of the type they weren't really making anymore even in 1975. A lot of this has to do with the script sticking to Burroughs' Victorian style. (His Caprona tales were first published in 1918; as late as World War II he'd still be cranking out novels in the writing style of the 19th Century.) The film's a throwback to the likes of the original King Kong and potboilers such as Unknown Island (1948) and The Land Unknown (1957), only in color."
http://www.eccentric-cinema.com/cult_movies/land_time_forgot.htm
Interested?
Beware or else Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price will accuse you of using a racist term.
Um, don’t you mean “African American Smokers”?
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