We Are About to Start Mining Hydrothermal Vents on the Ocean Floor
by Brandon Keim
Sep 12, 2015
5 minutes
Forty years ago, scientists found alien life. Not on another planet, but on Earth, in the deep sea, in places where plumes of steam and nutrients heated by volcanic activity fed entire ecologies of creatures adapted to harness chemical energy rather than energy from the sun.
The discovery redefined life’s biophysical possibilities, and scientists and explorers have since charted another world. Or, rather, many worlds: there are more than 500 hydrothermal vent fields scattered across Earth’s seafloors, containing not just the iconic smoking vents but volcano slopes called cobalt crusts and seabed plains known as manganese nodule fields. These are, in a sense, the rain forests and
You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.
Start your free 30 days