Carbon and Life in Deep Seafloor Rocks

The sea floor drill-rig MARUM-MeBo MARUM, University of Bremen

On October 26th, an international team of scientists will sail from Southampton, UK, on board the British Royal Research Vessel James Cook. During a 6-week expedition in the Atlantic Ocean the team will explore the Atlantis Massif, a prominent, nearly 4,000 metre high underwater mountain which is part of the world`s longest mountain chain.

Led by Co-Chief Scientists Gretchen Früh-Green, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Beth Orcutt, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, USA, the team will collect cores of rocks using seabed rock drills. The plan is to drill at 11 sites in water depths of 720 to 1,770 metres and to recover cores between 50 and 70 metres in length.

“Scientifically the sea bed is remarkable because the Atlantis Massif is made up of rocks from the Earth's mantle”, says marine geologist Gretchen Früh-Green, who explored this remarkable sub-seafloor region already during expeditions in 2003 and 2005.

“In the presence of seawater these rocks produce the greenhouse gas methane, hydrogen and heat, among other things.” Such rock reactions excite scientists because they represent possible sources to fuel life in the absence of sunlight and may be analogous to conditions found on other planets, or early in Earth's history.

“Among other things we hope to learn more about what kind of life exists on and within rocks at the Atlantis Massif”, says marine microbiologist Beth Orcutt. “Moreover we shall investigate the fate of carbon. Do the reactions between rocks and seawater lead to carbon storage in the seafloor? And does this process impact the global carbon cycle and our climate?”

Overall the expedition aims to study
• how mantle rocks are brought up to the seafloor,
• how the rocks react with seawater,
• how carbon is cycled during this process,
• what type of life exists on and within the rocks and how organisms can survive in this extreme environment.

The expedition is conducted by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) as part of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). Two rock drills were installed on the RRS James Cook, operated by the British Geological Survey and MARUM, the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences in Bremen/Germany. It is the first expedition of this kind to use this type of remotely operated drilling technology.

Contact / Interviews / Images / Videos:
Albert Gerdes
MARUM
University of Bremen/Germany
Email: agerdes@marum.de

Alan Stevenson
British Geological Survey
Email: agst@bgs.ac.uk

http://www.eso.ecord.org/expeditions/357/357.php – about the expedition
http://www.ecord.org/p/msp.html – photos etc.
http://www.iodp.org – about the International Ocean Discovery Program IODP
http://www.ecord.org – about the European part of IODP

Media Contact

Albert Gerdes idw - Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

All latest news from the category: Earth Sciences

Earth Sciences (also referred to as Geosciences), which deals with basic issues surrounding our planet, plays a vital role in the area of energy and raw materials supply.

Earth Sciences comprises subjects such as geology, geography, geological informatics, paleontology, mineralogy, petrography, crystallography, geophysics, geodesy, glaciology, cartography, photogrammetry, meteorology and seismology, early-warning systems, earthquake research and polar research.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Memory Self-Test via Smartphone

… Can Identify Early Signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Dedicated memory tests on smartphones enable the detection of “mild cognitive impairment”, a condition that may indicate Alzheimer’s disease, with high accuracy….

Partners & Sponsors