Major discovery of underwater hot springs

Are there any hot springs under the sea now? What do hot springs under the sea look like? In the past 20 years, after repeated investigations by scientists, they have discovered that there are hot springs at the bottom of the ocean, but it is a pity that ordinary people cannot see them. Only when one day we have the conditions to travel to the bottom of the ocean, will everyone be able to feast their eyes on it.

American scientists took the "Alvin" deep submersible to investigate and discovered that there were things emitting black smoke on the seabed. These are submarine hot springs.

In October 1977, American scientists took the submersible "Alvin" to the deep seabed of the Galapagos on the East Pacific Rise. During an investigation in the Great Rift Valley, they were surprised to find: On the seafloor here, there is a A black chimney-shaped monster, its height is generally 2-5 meters, and it is in the shape of a cylinder that is thin at the top and thick at the bottom. A liquid different from the surrounding sea water emerges from the "chimney", and the temperature here is as high as 350°C. Near the "chimney" area, the water temperature is above 30°C all year round, while the water temperature at the ocean floor is generally only 4°C. It can be seen that these submarine "chimneys" are hot springs on the seabed.

Around the mouth of the seabed hot spring, there are blood-red tube worms, like yellow plastic tubes, the longest of which is 3 meters long. They are arranged horizontally and vertically. They use their blood-red granulation-like tentacles to capture and filter food in the water.

Are there any living creatures at the bottom of such a hot ocean? Scientists further investigated and found that around the mouth of the seabed hot springs, there were not only living things, but also a novel biological paradise: there were blood-red tube-shaped worms, like yellow plastic tubes, the longest of which was 3 meters long, arranged in random directions. , it uses its blood-red granule-like tentacles to capture and filter food in the water. These tube-shaped worms have neither a mouth nor anus, nor an intestine, and live by wriggling on the seafloor through a tube. But it has hemoglobin in its body and its tentacles are filled with blood. There are surprisingly large crabs that have no eyes but can crawl everywhere; large and fat clams with red blood in their bodies. They grow very fast and are usually as big as the mouth of a bowl. There is also a creature that looks like a dandelion flower. There are often dozens of them connected together. Some are responsible for hunting, and some are responsible for digestion. Each has its own division of labor, and it is busy but not chaotic. The creatures here are very unique and happy, making it a real "paradise". Scientists call this place a "deep sea oasis". This place is located on the seabed thousands of meters underwater. There is no sunlight, no photosynthesis, and no seaweed. How do the animals here live? Scientists believe that the water here is extremely rich in nutrients, 300 times that of the general seabed, and 3-4 times higher than that of biologically rich waters. The marine bacteria here spread rapidly by devouring the rich sulfide in the hot springs. Then, the marine bacteria become a delicacy for worms, shrimps, crabs and clams. In this special deep-sea environment, a biological community that survives in darkness and high pressure is born. It seems that the saying "all things grow depends on the sun" does not apply here. This is an unexpected discovery by scientists. However, experiments have shown that the vitality of this special biological paradise in the deep sea is fragile. Once they are moved to the surface of the sea, under normal pressure, each of them will not live long. They will die, rot, and fall apart in an instant. .

Undersea hot springs not only nurture a group of unique marine life, but also generate valuable minerals needed by people in a short period of time. The hot solution emerging from those "black smokestacks" is rich in copper, iron, sulfur, zinc, as well as small amounts of lead, silver, gold, cobalt and other metals and other trace elements. When these hydrothermal fluids were mixed with 4°C seawater, the original colorless and transparent solution immediately turned into a black "smoke column." After testing, these smoke plumes are all particles of metal sulfides. These particles cannot go up very high. They are like flowers scattered from the top of the smoke column and deposited around the chimney, forming a high-content mineral pile. The history of natural mineralization that people knew in the past was measured in millions of years. The oil, coal, iron and other minerals being mined today were formed after tens of thousands of years. In hot springs on the deep sea floor, minerals are produced through the chemical action of black chimneys, which greatly shortens the time for mineralization. From the time a black smoker erupts to its final "death", it usually only takes ten to several decades. In just a few decades, a black smokestack can accumulate nearly a hundred tons of ore. Moreover, this kind of ore has basically no impurities such as soil and stone. It is composed of various metal compounds with high content. It can be used after a little decomposition. This is a major discovery made by scientists in underwater hot springs.

Such submarine hot springs are mostly found in the central area of ocean crust expansion, that is, in mid-ocean ridges and their fracture valleys. More than ten hot spring mouths have been discovered in a 6-kilometer-long and 0.5-kilometer-wide fracture valley on the East Pacific Rise alone. Such underwater hot springs are found in the Atlantic, Indian and Red Seas. Preliminary estimates indicate that the hot water injected into the ocean every year from these submarine hot springs is equivalent to one-third of the world's river water. It throws hundreds of thousands of tons of minerals onto the seabed every year. At a time when terrestrial mineral resources are close to being exhausted, the value of this new discovery is self-evident.

animal tags：