Locator: 49723LDC.
More from Beth, this time re: Nvidia, link here:
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The Science Page
I'm posting this for Sophia who has expressed an interest in marine biology.
From the linked article:
Scientists long assumed that cold vents, without the mineral-rich plumes that make active vents so mesmerizing, didn’t host unique lifeforms. The species they saw on them, including sponges and anemones, were also found elsewhere in the deep sea, suggesting that inactive vents were basically just rocks that common species sometimes landed on, rather than interesting ecosystems in their own right.
“It turns out that we just weren’t looking very closely,” says Jason Sylvan, a marine microbiologist at Texas A&M University.
On a research cruise with other scientists, Sylvan suggested taking a closer look: “I was obsessed with the inactive vents,” he recalls. So in early 2024, his colleagues scoured cold vents at a site known as Nine North, about 560 miles off Mexico’s southwest coast.
Scientists long assumed that cold vents, without the mineral-rich plumes that make active vents so mesmerizing, didn’t host unique lifeforms. The species they saw on them, including sponges and anemones, were also found elsewhere in the deep sea, suggesting that inactive vents were basically just rocks that common species sometimes landed on, rather than interesting ecosystems in their own right. “It turns out that we just weren’t looking very closely,” says Jason Sylvan, a marine microbiologist at Texas A&M University. On a research cruise with other scientists, Sylvan suggested taking a closer look: “I was obsessed with the inactive vents,” he recalls. So in early 2024, his colleagues scoured cold vents at a site known as Nine North, about 900 kilometers (560 miles) off Mexico’s southwest coast.
These vents, by the way, are thought to be the "origin of life."
