Rock at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean holds many secrets that could help scientist understand our planet and how life history add up to exist on it . That ’s why a chemical group of researchers undertook a difficult undertaking : digging a hollow over three - quarters of a mile mystifying and extracting a platter - go against inwardness of rock from the Earth ’s mantle .
scientist regularly draw out nub samples — cylindrical samples of material from rich under the Earth ’s surface — to examine the composition of different layers . That data can act as as a window into the satellite ’s past tense , providing info on climatic and environmental shifts , or the formation of Earth itself . drill in the deep ocean come with unique challenge , so researchers have often been forced to drag rocks from the sea floor . Analyzing the typography of those rocks can break valuable information , but these rocks can be altered by the pressure of the sea and by exposure to salt piss .
The expedition took place between April and June 2023 in an area of the North Atlantic known as the Atlantis Massif , an underwater mountain that rises 14,000 groundwork ( 4,267 m ) from the seafloor . The website was selected because tectonic activity in the area lunge rocks that are normally deep in the Earth ’s mantle far closer to the ocean floor , making them easier to recover . That still required some deep drilling to obtain a 4,160 - invertebrate foot - foresighted ( 1,268 meter ) near - uninterrupted gist of peridotite , a eccentric of igneous careen .
This is just a small portion of a very, very long core sample drilled out of the Atlantic Ocean seafloor.© Sarah Treadwell, Exp. 399, JRSO/IODP
This uttermost astuteness is far greater than any former attempts to drill into oceanic mantlepiece rocks . concord to thestudy , co - authored by C. Johan Lissenberg from Cardiff University , the scientist managed to recover 71 % of the practice textile , with nearly everlasting convalescence of long section of partially serpentinized harzburgite ( that is , partially pee - altered John Rock ) .
As noted in the paper , release in the journalScience , the investigator analyze the composition of minerals within the sway and found evidence supporting a theory of how rocks assume deep in the curtain rise to the surface . In that theory , pressure sensation thawing rocks that are then compact upward , mixing with magma in the crust before erupt on the ocean floor .
The researchers also found intrusions of a crystal clear rock phone gabbro , which is form by the dull cooling of magma . They believe the gabbro act a major role in regulating the minerals and gasoline found in cryptical sea vent , which some scientist consider are an ideal domicile for the formation ofprimitive life . Learning more about the vents could extend to new theories on how life on Earth first began , and how it could theoretically form on other planets .
In the work , the investigator recognize much more analytic thinking on what they drill need to be done . “ The comprehensive rock-and-roll record book obtain during Expedition 399 provides a wealthiness of opportunities to make underlying advances on our understanding of the pelagic upper mantle , ” they said .
In an accompanyingarticle , Utrecht University prof Eric Hellebrand aver the “ profundity far exceeds those immortalise in old drilling efforts and create opportunities to recognise geomorphologic and mineralogical feature of the mantle and how it interact with the hydro- and biospheres . ”
He also utter hope that the boring junket could raise the bar for the discipline of how the Earth was formed .
“ Decades of sea floor sampling by dredging have paint a bumpy mineralogical exposure of mantle , ” he wrote . “ Yet , each fresh boring military mission reveals surprising views of mantlepiece and formation of the pelagic impudence . More ambitious boring projection will reveal of import piece of music to understand the biogeochemical effects of oceanic mantle . ”
DEEP SEAGeologyrocks
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