Connections to Space

Today I want to talk about microbes. Our scientists are looking for microbes everywhere around hydrothermal vents. These microbes can be found free living or in symbiotic relationships between almost every living thing around the vents.

We collect microbial samples from rocks using the ALVIN's slurp gun, we bring up rocks with mats on them, and we look into the animals themselves.

These are crabs collected today. They will be dissected and their gut analyzed for microbes.

The scientists also examine the mussels we collect from the sea floor.

We have also looked at some anemones that we collected.

What is interesting is how these microbes use iron, manganese and sulfide to make food. The processes by which this occurs is similar to other symbiotic relationships like algae in coral.

The connections to space are making headlines this week in the news outlets. Recently, NASA put out an article about the Martian atmosphere. Guess what it contains? Elements such as iron, manganese, and sulfide! The exact same things that we are looking at out here. Here is a link to the article about Mars.

Also of interest comes from the Cassini spacecraft, whose 12 year mission took it by Saturn and all of its moons. One of the moons, Enceladus, seems to be an "ocean world." Scientists from NASA noted that the team thinks hydrothermic fluids are circulating on the floor of Enceladus' ocean. The warm fluids, mixed with the ocean water, would cause mineral precipitates to form on the sea floor - just like out here at the East Pacific Rise and hydrothermal vent sites around Earth's oceans.

here is an article about Saturn's moon

It could be that life on this moon and Jupiter's moon, Europa would look similar to the hydrothermal vent communities that we are studying now. Wow! That is pretty exciting stuff.

Now for some more fun pictures! These pictures show our science crew pulling the new ALVIN rope around the ship. It is the rope that holds the ALVIN on the A-Frame (we all have back belts on like the guy in the front - the foods not that great.)

The rope is about 80-90 feet long and has to be changed out every 100 dives or so. Notice all the other folks hanging out - must be why they brought me along!

There are many more exciting things happening as the cruise time winds down. I can't wait to see all of the interesting funding proposals that will come out of this. It seems that the more we discover, the more we realize we are only scratching the surface of this research. Marine science has taken quantum leaps in the last 50 years but there is so much left to be learned. Now it seems that we will be looking at "alien" worlds on Jupiter's and Saturn's moons. I have spent the past 20+ days observing some "alien" worlds right here on earth in the ocean deep. It has been amazing!