"Finding
black smoker vents on Mount Dent was a complete surprise," Connelly said in a statement.
Black smokers, discovered in 1977, bring the deep ocean floor alive.
Here, the environment is extremely alkaline, compared to the high acid levels at
black smokers.
A
black smoker is a rock tower shaped like a chimney.
exoculata ought to be able to detect black-body radiation from the tops of the
black smoker chimneys that are gushing 350 [degrees] C vent water.
A team of researchers led by marine geochemist Doug Connelly at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and marine biologist Jon Copley of the University of Southampton has revealed details of the world's deepest known "
black smoker" vents, so-called for the smoky-looking hot fluids that gush from them.
dissertation on the chemistry of the fluids gushing from the first deep-sea
black smoker hydrothermal vents sampled on a mid-ocean ridge.
Black smokers, or deep-sea hydrothermal vents, are present in all of the world's oceans in areas associated with tectonic and volcanic activity.
Exactly what relationship
black smoker chimneys have with volcanoes creating new oceanic crust is still uncertain but most scientists now agree that they probably exist throughout the Ridge system.
When the clear hot fluid jetting from these chimney-like structures mixed with cold seawater, fine particles of dark metal sulfides precipitated out of solution, creating the appearance of black "smoke" (hence the name "
black smoker chimneys.")
In 1985, Cindy Van Dover, then a graduate student in biology in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program, discovered a novel light-sensing organ on a unique species of shrimp that lives at high-temperature,
black smoker chimneys on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Using specially designed fluid bottles and temperature probes, Alvin took samples of these
black smoker chimneys, as well as the 350 [degrees] C fluids venting from them.