![]() ![]() And in the Sirena Trench, where an unmanned lander made a descent to 35,761 feet (10,900 m), researchers unexpectedly discovered outcrops of chemically altered rock called aragonite, lizardite and brucite, said JPL's Hand. At 180 million years old, rocks at the bottom of the Mariana Trench were molten lava when giant dinosaurs roamed the Earth.Ĭameron's imagery from the New Britain Trench, shown at the meeting, may be the deepest pictures ever taken of pillow lavas, formed when lava erupts under water, said marine geologist Patty Fryer of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. The high-definition video provided close-up images of not only the world's deepest sea life, but also the planet's oldest seafloor. "If you've never thought of loving worms, if you've seen these videos, you would love worms," Bartlett said. The higher elevation walls of New Britain, which extend to a depth of around 12,467 feet (3.8 km) depth, anchored hundreds of acorn worms, a deep- sea invertebrate that leaves distinctive spiral traces of poo on the seafloor. 31 and April 3, with one manned dive to Mariana's Challenger Deep, the dark, flat pool that scientists now know houses a surprising array of life. "Perhaps not just here, but also on worlds like Europa," an icy moon of Jupiter.Ĭameron's Deepsea Challenger expedition made dives to the New Britain Trench and the Mariana Trench in the southwestern Pacific Ocean between Jan. "It could be the driving engine that leads to the emergence of life," he said. "We do think that this chemistry could be the roots for metabolism," said Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. Researchers have speculated that a similar setup may have sparked the chemical steps that lead to life on Earth, and possibly elsewhere in the solar system. The discovery of microbial mats - bizarre-looking, filamentlike clumps of microorganisms - living off chemicals from altered rocks 35,803 feet (10,912 meters) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean comes from samples and video collected by an unmanned lander, part of movie director James Cameron's mission to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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