Hydrothermal vents are openings on the seafloor where hot water with minerals gushes out.
Full definition
In spring 2015, MBARI researchers discovered a large, previously unknown field
of hydrothermal vents in the Gulf of California, about 150 kilometers (100 miles) east of La Paz, Mexico.
Like the communities at
hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, they can survive independently of sunlight and oxygen.
Specific enrichment of hyperthermophilic electroactive Archaea from deep -
sea hydrothermal vent on electrically conductive support — Guillaume Pillot — Bioresource Technology
Suggestions of hydrothermal activity on Europa led researchers to speculate that life there could resemble ecosystems around
hydrothermal vents on Earth and would survive on chemosynthesis, extracting energy from chemicals.
Currently, we are exploring several environmental samples retrieved from allover the world - ranging
from hydrothermal vents in Japan to hot springs in Yellowstone National Park and New Zealand — for the presence of novel archaeal (and bacterial) lineages using cultivation - independent approaches, such as metagenomics and single cell genomics.
Potential Europan habitats include deep - sea colonies based on heat - loving bacteria like those found
around hydrothermal vents on Earth's ocean floor.
Mars is thought to have contained oceans with similar conditions to those
near hydrothermal vents at around the same time the fossils were thriving, living creatures.
Earthly life has proved remarkably hardy in similar extreme environments such
as hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor and polar ice.
Given developing efforts to mine deep - sea
hydrothermal vent fields for precious metals, the scientists involved in this research suggest that conservationists and management agencies need to consider a broader range of factors in their efforts to predict the environmental impacts and the resiliency of affected communities.
LIFE STORIES DNA samples of microbes discovered near
hydrothermal vents like this one in the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge may be the closest kin yet known to complex life.
The findings support the idea that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) lurked in
hydrothermal vents where hot water rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide and minerals emerged from the sea floor.
The deepest of the species, Xenoturbella profunda, was discovered in a 3,700 - meter (12,139 - foot)-
deep hydrothermal vent in the Gulf of California.
Thijs Ettema at Uppsala University, Sweden, and his team discovered the new organisms when they analysed DNA extracted from underwater sediment near Loki's Castle, a region of
hydrothermal vents along the Arctic mid-ocean ridge (Nature, DOI: 10.1038 / nature14447).
The rocks they are held in were formed
by hydrothermal vent systems at the bottom of the ocean, billions of years ago.
In 2012, scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) used undersea robots to discover a
new hydrothermal vent field along the Alarcón Rise at the southern end of the Gulf of California.
Pohlman believed chemosynthetic bacteria, like the kinds found around deep -
ocean hydrothermal vents, must be the answer.
Compared with manganese nodules, the seafloor sulfides associated
with hydrothermal vents have a huge advantage: They are much easier to get to.
Sister - species of eastern Pacific
hydrothermal vent worms (Ampharetidae, Alvinellidae, Vestimentifera) provide new mitochondrial COI clock calibration
On Earth, molecular hydrogen, or H2, enters ocean water where
hot hydrothermal vents emerge from the ocean floor.
TOKYO — Conventional wisdom held that the deep - seafloor was pretty much bereft of life at the time marine biologist J. Frederick Grassle rode the Alvin submersible to examine newly
discovered hydrothermal vents near the Galapagos Islands in 1979.
Hydrothermal vents form by an analogous method: Ion - rich hot water is expelled from the seafloor and then begins to dissolve, forming a porous shell of metal extending upward.
These forces also serve as Europa's energy source, heating its iron - nickel core and creating
undersea hydrothermal vents that may circulate heat and minerals.
Enceladus not only has a thin global ocean of water, as shown in this NASA illustration (layer thickness is not to scale), but some of the water is likely heated
via hydrothermal vents.
Joe Jones of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute codiscovered the crab — which he calls Yeti, after the mythical abominable snowman — while he and his colleagues were exploring
hydrothermal vents using the submersible vehicle Alvin.
We now know that distant moons like Europa, which orbits Jupiter, and Enceladus, which circles Saturn, house vast subsurface oceans that some astrobiologists suspect
host hydrothermal vents akin to Lost City.
Rocks found in Greenland in 2007
suggest hydrothermal vents were present 3.8 billion years ago, just before life is thought to have originated.
SIGNS OF LIFE In rocks left over from
ancient hydrothermal vents, these microscopic tubes of hematite, an ore of iron, may be remnants of early microbes.
It is nearly impossible to locate and
investigate hydrothermal vents because they occur too deep for traditional exploration techniques and emit a soup of hydrogen sulfide and other toxic chemicals.
Dust from Saturn's rings shows Enceladus could have
hydrothermal vents similar to those on Earth at the bottom of its ice - covered sea
The second spot was Axial Seamount, an active underwater volcano, along with its
associated hydrothermal vents, where the team could study the transfer of minerals from beneath the seafloor into the water and access hardy microbes that thrive in the vent fluids, which can reach 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Forty years ago
when hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor were first discovered, scientists were amazed to find life where no sunlight penetrated, feeding off of sulfur gases.
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