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URI Oceanography Professors John King (second from right) and Arthur Spivack (right) watch as core samples are collected at Salty Brine State Beach following the explosion in July. Credit: Chris Deacutis ============================================================================================================================================= When an explosion beneath the sand at Salty Brine State Beach in Narragansett injured a visiting vacationer, state and local police and the bomb squad found no evidence of what may have caused the blast. So state officials turned to scientists at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography for answers. It didn't take long before they had solved the mystery. Janet Coit, director of the...

Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet's most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control. "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer. In 2000, Kelley led an expedition using a manned submersible to explore the deep Atlantic Ocean. Her team stumbled upon something never seen before. The researchers discovered a startlingly massive collection of limestone towers located miles away from the tectonic "spreading" cracks in the seafloor that typically produce such structures. Some of these hydrothermal...

Ocean Studies May Be Heading to Space By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer SEATTLE - The skills and technology used to explore the extreme depths of the Earth's oceans will soon find work in outer space. Scientists are making plans to probe the icy seas of Jupiter's moons and drop a lander to the bizarre gasoline-like lakes of Titan, a moon of Saturn. "The possibilities of studying the extraterrestrial oceans in the solar system is now real," said Torrence Johnson, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Johnson, speaking Saturday at the national meeting of the American Association for the...