Hydrothermal Vents

The Earth’s outer crust is made up many tectonic plates that move over the surface of the planet. When the plates come collide, volcanoes will form sometime (National Ocean Service). Volcanoes can also form in the middle of a plate, where magma rises upward until it erupts on the sea floor, at what is called a “hot spot” (National Ocean Service). A hot spot is a plume of magma or molten rock that rises from within the Earth then reaches the surface forming underwater volcanoes which may grow tall enough to

Imagine you are at the bottom of the ocean, and there are hydrothermal vents ejecting hot lava. Adding to your misery, there are huge amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas everywhere that are poisonous to your body. In reality, this is the giant tube worm’s ecosystem. Ecosystems are all of the living things (plants/animals) and the non-living things that live in a specific area and interact with each other. Ecosystems can be of any size. In an ecosystem, there are biotic and abiotic components that are all linked. The pelagic zone or “open ocean zone”, where the giant tube worm, an underwater animal that lives near hydrothermal vents, lives is located next to the continental slope/drop off. The water is much deeper here. At the surface, there is

Recent research has suggested the P. marinus may be a key contributor to evolution. Since the organism is incredibly abundant, it also produces an abundant amount of oxygen. Therefore, scientists propose that it has produced much of the oxygen we currently breathe, incited the explosion of early life within our oceans, and fueled the atmosphere’s ancient rise of oxygen. Researchers have also observed that there are differing ecotypes of P. marinus. Each ecotype has a unique hue (bright green, yellow, etc..) that corresponds to its depth. This makes the microbe extremely efficient while photosynthesizing. Additionally, this microbe has the power to regulate CO₂ levels that contribute to global warming, due to its part in the carbon cycle. P. marinus is also a key factor in the ocean’s food webs. It tends to thrive in nutrient-poor regions, making it a valuable food source in the ocean’s web. P. marinus also secretes a variety of peptides that in turn cause other oceanic microbes to secrete an enzyme. This enzyme is responsible for detoxifying reactive oxygen

Geothermal Energy: it means the use of heated water and stream to power the power station for turning steam and heated water to electricity but it's expensive

I think that people are being selfish and not thinking about the environment and these hydrothermal vents. Also the evidence for why mining near hydrothermal vents is much stronger than why it’s beneficial. People say it’s beneficial because there’s no acid mine drainage, or that mining does not affect active black smokers and lastly, that the sulfide deposits are on the seafloor so there is not any waste rock piles. Many people believe that the hydrothermal vent creatures could be what the early life had evolved from. Comparing these weak evidence about why mining near hydrothermal vents is beneficial to why it is not good is hilarious. People mine for gold, silver, copper, zinc and lead from hydrothermal vents deposits. It may be an easier

According to Middlemost (1988)’s basic definition, magma is a heated rock-forming substance that is created within a planet and exists only below Earth. When magma escapes to the Earth’s surface and is extruded, they are known as lavas. Grotzinger and Jordan (2010) suggests that magma mainly comes from the asthenosphere- the upper part of the mantle.

The main concern still remains to be the survival of life and a study suggests that prokaryotes like bacteria do not require oxygen to survive and they tend to live in hydrothermal vents. Yet, the photosynthetic organisms cannot survive but cracks in the ice during the event would allow photosynthesizers to persist and produce trace amounts of oxygen that could be used by eukaryotes (6).

Unfortunately none were found. Two years later French and American scientist sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This time they used the Alvin, a twenty-five foot long submarine specifically designed for deep ocean exploration. The expedition was led by Dr. Robert Ballard. They dove down 2,500 meters into the galapagos rift. There they found hydrothermal vents for the first time in recorded human history. John Corliss, a scientist on the expedition, Wrote: “Shimmering water streams up past giant tube worms, never seen by man. A crab scuttles over lava encrusted with limpets”. A hydrothermal vent is

Ocean acidification is the decrease in the acidity levels of the Earth 's oceans, caused by the intake of carbon dioxide emitted in to the environment and atmosphere. Since the industrial revolution, fossil fuel-powered machines have increased human technology and advancement. However, this has caused the emissions, large amounts of carbon dioxide, deforestation, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Ocean acidification, in turn, has created a benefit to us by slowing down climate change by absorbing the emissions in the water that have remained in the air. However, studies are now starting to show that the massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the water bodies are altering the water chemistry and affecting the biodiversity and life cycles of many marine organisms, especially those at the lower end of the food chain. Other organisms living off the food chain would be part of a symbiotic relationship involving nutrient cycling: where all other organisms are feeding off of the larger one, yet are providing some benefit to the overall host.

Life on the deep sea-floor is minimal to none, the temperature of the sea at those levels is close to freezing. Such extremely cold water slows biochemical processes like chemosynthesis. Since they live in such deep waters, human activity has very little impact on their population which leads them to a lifespan of 15 to 30 years. However, there are oxygen-deprived zones where life hangs on and life is scarce; there are already hypoxic zones which means that there are some organisms out there living in an environment with low oxygen levels which is making life scarce. In some areas, however, deep-sea benthos are full of life and communities because hydrothermal vents and deep water coral reefs support diverse ecosystems. The animals that are

Next the value of hydrothermal vents go beyond minerals.The vents have a bio-organism that is very important to us.In the fact that these microbes have somrthing in them that can cure cancer.These

As shown previously, methane hydrate contains 1 mole of methane for every 5.75 mole of water, corresponding to 13.4% methane by mass, in ideal situation. In reality, this number might be lower. Therefore, the actual energy housed within a methane hydrate formation is likely to be much lower than that of a conventional gas, coal, or oil formation with the same volume. Combining with the reality that a methane hydrate formation can exist with very low methane hydrate saturation (~5%), the energy housed within such formation will be even lower. Therefore, when extracting a methane hydrate formation, the maximum energy input for extraction is of consideration, since if the required input energy is larger than the theoretical output energy, the whole process will become commercially unfavorable. There is not enough statistical data to show the net energy output while using thermal injection method or CO2 injection method. But both of these methods are energy intensive. For thermal injection method, a constant stream of steam or hot water need to be produced and injected into the formation. While the constant production of steam or hot water is already energy intensive, the heat dissipation during injection is also considerable, since the formations are typically hundreds of meters underneath the seafloor or hundreds of meters deep in the permafrost. For CO2 injection method, the CO2

A hot spot is fed by a region deep within the Earth’s mantle from which heat rises through the process of convection. This heat facilitates the melting of rock at the base of the lithosphere, where the brittle, upper portion of the mantle meets the Earth’s crust. The melted rock, known as magma, often pushes through cracks in the crust to form volcanoes.

A volcanic vent is a an area in the ocean where seawater seeps into small cracks. These cracks go far into the earths crust, the water can get a temperature of 750 degrees Fahrenheit.

The hydrogen in the sub-surface sea could join with carbon dioxide atoms in a procedure known as methanogenesis, which makes a result of methane. In the occasion that there are to be sure organisms living in the moon's sea, they could draw from that vitality source as sustenance. Researchers said the Enceladus moon seemed to have adequate vitality supplies to bolster life. It is what might as well be called 300 pizzas for each hour, as indicated by Christopher Glein, a geochemist at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas.