Here are some of the discoveries made in the deep sea that baffled scientists for years and turned theories.
Oceanographers believe the secrets of the sea are beyond human imagination. In search of the extra-terrestrial life, scientists are now turning to the sea and along with marine biologists, oceanographers are launching deep-sea explorations to probe the boundary of life on Earth. It is believed more than 80 percent of the ocean is yet to be explored and yet then scientists from NASA believe exploring unknown territories of the deep sea can reveal tangible guideposts for exploring outer space.
Here are some of the discoveries made in the deep sea that baffled scientists for years and turned theories.
Scientists have long thought that the lowest part of the food chain organisms survives by converting light to food. So it was thought any life at the bottom of the sea munched on dead organisms that felt through water but to utter surprise U.S research team discovered in 1977 a dense cluster of mussels and clams and then an entire vibrant ecosystem 8,000 feet inside the sea. They realized these microbes carried chemosynthesis for survival using chemicals from the rocks at hydrothermal vents.
Scientists discovered in 2016 that the Greenland shark is the oldest vertebrate on the planet, about 400 years old. Earlier it was thought that the bowhead whale that only lived for 211 years was the oldest creature with the backbone to have existed on Earth. Scientists subjected the shark to the radioactive age finding technique and found that the crystal structure of the eye lens remains intact from the moment of its creation in the womb. The largest shark studied lived for 392 years.
Scientists tried gathering data on the polar atmosphere, ice, and ocean conditions over a ship that drifted across the Arctic Ocean for a year and found that there is a hidden source of carbon brought by freshwater runoff from continental shelf sediments and rivers brought via a transpolar drift. Carbon forms building blocks of deep-sea life.
Deep-sea exploration altered scientists’ view that Earth resembled a water world about 3.2 billion years ago. They measured oxygen isotopes and temperatures in the ocean’s crust in Western Australia and found that the Earth’s surface changed over time. The findings provided insight into how the very first ecosystem evolved in the oceans itself.
