Free Republic

The Greenland-Scotland Ridge looms like a great undersea barrier, stretching from East Greenland to Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and across to Scotland. The Denmark Strait is a critical checkpoint through which cold, fresher waters from northern seas flow across the ridge into the the main body of the North Atlantic Ocean. (Illustration by E. Paul Oberlander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)From USGS, who is now apparently in the climate business, because mapping and earthquakes are sooo 20th century.  New Discoveries Improve Climate ModelsUnderwater Ridges Impact Ocean’s Flow of Warm WaterNew discoveries on how underwater ridges impact the ocean’s circulation system...

IN 2013, SCIENTISTS were stunned to find microbes thriving deep inside volcanic rocks beneath the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest, buried under more than 870 feet of sediment. The rocks were on the flank of the volcanic rift where they were born, and they were still young and hot enough to drive intense chemical reactions with the seawater, from which the microbes derived their energy. Now, however, another team of researchers have discovered living cells inside exceedingly old, cold oceanic crust in the middle of the South Pacific. It isn’t yet clear how these new microbes are managing to survive—and...