From the Max Planck Society
New deep-sea hot springs discovered in the Atlantic
Scientists from the MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen on board the German research vessel Meteor have discovered a new hydrothermal vent 500 kilometres south-west of the Azores. The vent with chimneys as high as one meter and fluids with temperatures up to 300 degrees Celsius was found at one thousand metres water depth in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery of the new deep-sea vent is remarkable because the area in which it was found has been intensively studied during previous research cruises. The MARUM and Max Planck researchers describe their discovery in their video blog.
Chimney-like structures spew hot fluids of up to 300 degrees Celsius that contain large amounts of methane and hydrogen sulfide.
Image: MARUM
The Bremen scientists were able to find the hydrothermal vent by using the new, latest-generation multibeam echosounder on board the research vessel Meteor that allows the imaging of the water column above the ocean floor with previously unattained precision. The scientists saw a plume of gas bubbles in the water column at a site about 5 kilometers away from the known large vent field Menez Gwen that they were working on. A dive with the remote-controlled submarine MARUM-QUEST revealed the new hydrothermal site with smokers and animals typically found at vents on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Since the discovery of the new vent, the scientists have been intensively searching the water column with the multibeam echosounder. To their astonishment, they have already found at least five other sites with gas plumes. Some even lie outside the volcanically active spreading zone in areas where hydrothermal activity was previously not assumed to occur.
“Our results indicate that many more of these small active sites exist along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge than previously assumed,” said Dr. Nicole Dubilier, the chief scientist of the expedition. “This could change our understanding of the contribution of hydrothermal activity to the thermal budget of the oceans. Our discovery is also exciting because it could provide the answer to a long standing mystery: We do not know how animals travel between the large hydrothermal vents, which are often separated by hundreds to thousands of kilometres from each other. They may be using these smaller sites as stepping stones for their dispersal.”
Research on deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic is the objective of the 30 marine scientists from Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel, Portugal, and France who have been on board the German research vessel Meteor since September 6th. The expedition to the submarine volcano Menez Gwen near the Azores is financed by MARUM, the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences in Bremen. “One of the questions that the team would like to answer is why the hydrothermal sources in this area emit so much methane – a very potent greenhouse gas,” says chief scientist Nicole Dubilier, who is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Census of Marine Life Vents and Seeps project ChEss (Chemosynthetic Ecosystem Science). “Another important focus of the research is the deep-sea mussels that live at the hydrothermal vents and host symbiotic bacteria in their gills. The mussels obtain their nutrition from these bacteria.”
The hydrothermal vent crab Segonzacia on a mound that is covered with white bacteria and mineral precipitates.
Image: MARUM
Video blog: “News from the main deck”
An expedition on a research vessel is not only marked by great moments, like this discovery; everyday life on the Meteor is also filled with other exciting activities and events. Work on a research vessel goes on round the clock throughout the entire expedition. In his video podcast “Neues vom Peildeck / News from the observation deck”, available through the Hamburg-based newspaper Abendblatt, and in German and English on YouTube (see link below), Dennis Fink, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, reports on the activities of the ship’s remote-operated vehicle (ROV) MARUM-QUEST, the various instruments used by the scientists and life on board the ship. In the two-minute video blogs, Fink and his colleagues show fascinating images direct from the sea floor.
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Contact:
Dr. Manfred Schlösser, Public Relations
Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen
Tel.: +49 421 2028704
E-mail: mschloes@mpi-bremen.de
Albert Gerdes, Public Relations
MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Research University of Bremen, Bremen
Tel.: +49 421 218-65540
E-mail: agerdes@marum.de
@ur momisugly Dave Springer October 10, 2010 at 10:43 am:
First of all, thanks for that article.
Next, in this article this article from this past March it points out that
I would point out that they have not been looking for these for a really long time, and that 220 should grow substantially.
I also would point out that they do not in themselves have to be generating heat everywhere to affect conditions in certain focused areas. As a parallel, all of our weather avearges out to where a difference of 0.7°C in that average freaks people out, yet our Standard Deviation from that locally is many times larger than that, so it is obvious that A:) an average doesn’t tell us much about potential impact, and B:) an excess or a lack of local heat energy can have serious affects on our lives, at least for a few days or weeks.
I am shocked that the Indian Ocean article did not say where the vent was located. It might have some effect on the monsoons if it is located in the right place.
So, how many of these are there?
One more thing I’d note:
One cannot look at a video of a vent and not see a similarity to the BP oil spill. When I look at the velocity of both, they both seem to be VERY close. In some of them the volume being expelled also seems to be reasonably close.
That brings up the question: If the BP spill was a catastrophic occurrence, and it lasted 3 months or so, how much potential does a vent have to affect matters, when it goes 24/7/365 pretty much forever?
I’d also point out that your calcs are based on what we currently believe to be true. With this present discovery, scientists are showing that what we think is true often has to take a back seat to new information. The Earths’ interior heat balance may be quite a bit different from what we presently believe it to be. I am not doubting your calcs, but they do make the assumption that what we “know” now is the final word. These vents have been putting heat into our environment for a VERY long time, and no one really looked at them as part of the equation until recently. The PDO also was never considered as part of the equation (because we didn’t know it existed) – but now it has to be included in models and our thinking. New info = new calcs. And there will be many more changes to come. (And they will do their best to incorporate them.)
feet2thefire says: (October 10, 2010 at 7:50 pm) I’ve also asked quite a few questions here without getting very many responses.
I do read your questions, Feet, and puzzle; but I do not have the science which would give my answers any value — so your musings do have an effect (and I read timeline left to right…).
W Abbot “I assume they are the source of the methane.
Chemosynthetic autotrophs with a taste for hydrocarbons consume methane – they do not produce it.
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/10index/background/edu/media/tubeworm.pdf
(Titan makes me suspect that hydrocarbons may have been prolific on Earth before life emerged–not vice-versa.)
I’m sure Gary Pearse meant to say the Archean is 3.8 to 2.5 bya. (changing his “mya” to “bya”).
I understand a volume of water equal to the entire earth’s oceans goes through the mid-oceanic ridges every 8 million years or so, with the primary driver for such a process being the hydrothermal temperature regime associated with spreading ridges. That’s a lot of water and a lot of heat removed from the earth’s interior.
Perhaps the big industrial polluters could offset their carbon credits by having Haliburton cap the outlets, otherwise thermal vents may end up releasing even more methane than vegans.
I’ve known about black smokers (and pillow lava etc) for a long time and always been a bit surprised that perceived wisdom thinks geothermal contribution of heat from earth to oceans is relatively trivial – mind you wasn’t the theory for pillow lava ridiculed until it was actually observed in-situ? Given the relatively well known nature of vulcanism on land, surely in the absence of information to the contrary, we would assume things under the sea are pretty similar? (ie variable and often dramatic). The temperature difference between magma and sea water (especially deep sea water) is a few hundred degrees, and the thermal conductivity of seawater is much greater than that of air, so surely you wouldn’t need much sub-sea vulcanism to rival heat fluxes from atmosphere to ocean?
Then when you think about how much high resolution sea-floor mapping we have and how you have to go from point measurements (sampling) to spatial extent to calculate heat budgets, I’d have thought there is scope there for a lot of known unknowns!
Earths rotation coupled with convective heat transfer by water vapour causes much of the tropospheric dynamics (putting aside momentarily the MASSIVE contribution from CO2 of course) – why would we think things are less complex dynamically below the crust? Pretty tricky to get down there and make measurements though. Any geologic equivalent to a radiosonde? 🙂
As for the methane, if there’s not too much free oxygen around, presumably everything would be in a reduced form so methane would be one of the lowest common denominators?
Anyone know what the isotopic ratios are likely to be in those hot fluids?
kcrucible says:
October 10, 2010 at 1:05 pm
“You’re assuming that the earth’s core started out massively hot and has simply been cooling since then, with no added energy.”
Correct.
“Gravity and tidal forces serve to wrench the core, causing friction, heating things up.”
To a degree, yes. Tidal forces are estimated to add 0.002% (3 terawatts, 0.0059 W m-2) to the incoming energy budget.
“In the aggregate, no doubt it’s cooler now than before, but it’s cooling down a lot slower than merely measuring the heat loss would suggest.”
Can you provide some support for that assertion?
“Haven’t really read this site, but it comes up in a google search about tidal heating. When you can have icy moons far away from the sun with volcanic activity, the heat is coming from non-solar means.”
Yes of course but we’re talking about moons orbiting gas giants where tidal forces generate that much energy. The earth is hardly a gas giant which handily explains why our moon doesn’t have a molten core and to suggest that our moon could keep the earth’s core molten is to suggest that the tail wags the dog. Essentially all the energy in the earth’s energy budget comes from the sun. Less than 1% comes from other sources. These other sources are justifiably ignored. That huge fusion reactor in the sky we call the sun is the primary source of energy for the earth and everything else combined literally pales in comparison.
http://hotcoreearth.com/?p=47
“It is noteworthy to realize that Triton itself has the coldest surface temperature of any moon in the Solar System. This is very significant. Because it is so far away Triton receives very little sunlight and so is an icy dead world. Or is it? It has been discovered recently that Triton is actually volcanic! In other words below its surface there is excessive heat! A very strange discovery. Here is a relatively small moon in the distant reaches of the solar system emitting heat from its core just like our own Earth! The question is why?”
Khwarizmi says:
October 10, 2010 at 9:11 pm
“Chemosynthetic autotrophs with a taste for hydrocarbons consume methane – they do not produce it.”
Most archeans are methanogens and are found in great abundance in and around hydrothermal vents. Archean methanogens are classed as chemosynthetic.
See:
Introduction to Marine Biology
By George Karleskint, Richard Turner, James Small
http://books.google.com/books?id=0JkKOFIj5pgC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=methanogen+chemosynthetic&source=bl&ots=Rkt32khOtH&sig=USx56dkX1HYo93nlnSyJlr02x8k&hl=en&ei=IiuzTOOiDcOAlAeVl73lDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=methanogen%20chemosynthetic&f=false
So, a methanogen produces methane as a metabolic by-product. So I was right – the large quantities of methane are perhaps created by the archeans, rather than utilized as a nutrient. Khwarizmi? What do you think?
The study and investigation of hydrothermal vents is an area of science which needs more investigation.
Louis Hissink is right. The methane is a tip-off that hydrocarbons are part of the natural mineralogical processes of Earth’s crust & shallow mantle.
There are over 4,000 minerals, many run in mineralogical families.
Schematic presentation of abiotic theory of hydrocarbon production:
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/abstracts/2005research_calgary/abstracts/extended/keith/images/fig01.htm
Abstract of scientific paper schematic is based on:
Hydrothermal Hydrocarbons authored by Stanley B. Keith and Monte M. Swan, MagmaChem, LLC, P. O. Box 672, Sonoita, Arizona, USA, 85637
MagmaChem is financially supported by a consortium of mining & oil companies.
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/abstracts/2005research_calgary/abstracts/extended/keith/keith.htm
The chemical reactions and processes which go on deep in the Earth is one of the least understood areas of science.
Presentation at the Houston Geological Society by Stanley B. Keith: Cracks of the World: Global Strike-Slip Fault Systems and Giant Resource Accumulations
http://www.hgs.org/en/art/?34
Everyone seems to say Earth’s heat is left over from formation and from radioactive decay.
Three things:
1) Heat is also generated in the core through the varying gravitation of the sun, moon and planets. The solid core moves within the liquid outer core, friction and compressing generating heat. Different celestial arrangements change the forces acting on the core. Isn’t that Landschiedt’s idea? Clearly this element of the heat released outwards varies in time.
2) There was that recent article proposing that the rate of radioactive decay varies depending on the neutrino flux, if true then again clearly the heat generated varies with time.
3) I have seen no place where the science of estimating the actual output of the Earth’s thermal energy is calculated, I am told it is miniscule compared to the incoming solar, but there is never any explanation of where the figures like 80mW/m2 come from. Who calculated that and how? What if it was out by a factor of 10 and that it varied by 10% or more over decadal or centenial timescales?
Just naive thoughts…
Dave Springer – I have no time to check your link today – I will do so tonight and add a quick comment.
William Abbott – apologies for spelling your surname incorrectly in my previous post.
quote:
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Evidence supporting a key role for anaerobic methane oxidation in the global methane cycle is reviewed. Emphasis is on recent microbiological advances. The driving force for research on this process continues to be the fact that microbial communities intercept and consume methane from anoxic environments, methane that would otherwise enter the atmosphere. Anaerobic methane oxidation is biogeochemically important because methane is a potent
greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and is abundant in anoxic environments.
Geochemical evidence for this process has been observed in numerous marine sediments along the continental margins, in methane seeps and vents, around methane hydrate deposits, and in anoxic waters. The anaerobic oxidation of methane is performed by at least two phylogenetically distinct groups of archaea, the ANME-1 and ANME-2.
These archaea are frequently observed as consortia with sulfate-reducing bacteria, and the metabolism of these consortia presumably involves asyntrophic association based on interspecies electron transfer.
[…]
The net chemical reaction associated with AOM is given in Equation(1).
CH4 + SO2−4 →HCO−3 + HS− + H2O
——-
Biogeochemistry and microbial ecology of methane oxidation in anoxic environments: a review.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12448726
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I want to see the chemical equation for turning dinosaur and cabbage goo into “fossil” fuel. I’ve been trying to find one for four years.
Anyway….
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Newly-discovered polychaete and shrimp species have been found living directly on methane hydrate ices.
[…]
Tell students that their assignment is to describe the overall chemical processes involved in using methane and hydrogen sulfide to synthesize organic material.
——
This Life Stinks! – NOAA:
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03windows/background/education/media/03win_lifestinks.pdf
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The Gulf of Mexico is seething with hydro-carbon fueled life.
Titan has no life, but as Smokey pointed out, it has a sea of methane (and lakes) filled with methane rain. Titan has an atmosphere estimated to be similar in composition to crude oil.
@ur momisugly Roger Carr October 10, 2010 at 8:41 pm…
Thanks, Roger, for the feedback.
It appears that you’ve visited my blog at http://www.feet2thefire.wordpress.com. If this sometimes isn’t the place for your comments, feel free to stop in again.
Your comment here triggered a post there, entitled On puzzles, science and Real Reality. I invite you to respond – there or there.
So, the possibility exists that the vast currents of the world oceans are directly affected, if not caused by, thermal vents on ocean bottoms. These currents then move through the oceans, at greater or lesser depths depending on local temperature gradients and in general move heat from the equator polewards, where they encounter colder waters and eventually sink and return to the equator. Some say there is evidence that the
Coriolis Effect is causative for currents and some say tides play a role.
I await an onslaught of links.
Richard Holle says:
October 10, 2010 at 11:23 am
My understanding is that the abundance of U-235 is no longer high enough relative to the abundance of U-238, at least for natural reactors to occur in surface deposits. Studying up on them reveals they would not have been common. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reactor
In this vast ocean, it is hard to believe that the few hydrothermal vents can produce substantial heat increase. Hydrothermal vents are also believed to exist in other planets. In the latest discovery by American Scientists exploring 68-mile-long Mid-Cayman rise deep beneath the surface of the Caribbean, discovered the deepest known hydrothermal vent in the world and was published in a recent issue of PNAS. What is more fascinating about these vents are the biological organisms thriving around it harnessing the heat and nutrients from the vent independent of the solar energy, which leads to the speculation that there might be similar organogenesis situation existing on other planets. The DNA collected from these areas by this group might throw some light into the biogensis of this biome.