Aliens of the Deep Page #3

It's just amazing,

We've got this huge,

huge carbonate structure,

Unbelievable,

Copy that.

Right rotator going up, rotator going up.

It's just the hot water just flowing up

and slowly forming stalactites,

Upside-down stalactites are slowly

deposited, millennium after millennium,

So what's interesting

about these

is that you don't necessarily

need plate tectonics,

You need some means for the water

to react with the deep mantle rock,

And then you get

the serpentinization reaction

which produces the heat that drives

the formation of such systems,

It's absolutely phenomenal,

Do you want to go ahead

and proceed to the summit? Over.

Roger that,

- There's warm water up here,

- Yeah,

The vent fluid is just

coming right up out of here,

Wow, This is just amazing,

Our technology is just

at the level now

where we can safely explore

the depths of our own ocean,

- Kinda friable,

- Yeah,

OK,

Yeah! Look at that,

- We got a rock,

- Hey, we got a sample,

Rover One, Rover One,

this is Rover Two, Do you...

- Oh, my goodness, look at that!

- Oh, Christ!

Holy cow,

- OK, stop it, stop it, stop it,

- Kevin. You seeing this?

Look at that thing,

That is absolutely unreal,

See if you can

get your lights right on it.

Roger that,

Oh, my goodness,

Look at that, it's just amazing,

Oh, man, look at this thing,

Look at this thing,

This is incredible,

How can something

like that be alive?

How does a creature like this work?

That is absolutely phenomenal,

Beautiful,

Absolutely beautiful,

See the reticulation inside this thing?

Look at that,

That is amazing,

I have no idea what that is,

- No,

- That's what I love about this stuff,

Every single dive, you're gonna see

something you've never seen before,

And you might even see something

that nobody's ever seen before,

Are you seeing this thing?

Look at this,

This is, like,

the ugliest fish in the world,

Oh, he's got feet! Look, he's got feet,

He's got, like, little toe-socks,

The thing about deep diving is you

always need to expect the unexpected.

Oh, my God,

look at that squid,

Oh, it's massive,

Look, look, look,

Quick, look,

See it?

Absolutely fantastic,

Look at that fish,

You see that guy?

All right, we got us a Dumbo,

Been hoping for this for a while,

What a beautiful animal,

What a beautiful animal, Look at that,

Like a dancer,

What an amazing creature,

God, you could watch this guy all day,

Almost looks like

he's glowing from within,

MIR One, MIR One,

This is Rover Two, Do you copy?

MIR One, MIR One,

do you copy? This is Rover Two.

MIR One, MIR One,

This is Rover Two, Do you copy?

It's intermittent, Jim,

Sometimes yes and sometimes no,

Uh, roger, Mike,

We're seriously low on power

and will have to leave the bottom,

I cannot get ahold of Vince,

We must go up,

Genya, We must go up,

Oh, he's trying to say something,

about...

He's trying to say...

Look out the porthole,

I can't see him,

Can you call surface?

He's saying, "Up and over"?

Might be,

We need you to contact the surface

that we are ascending,

Can't read it, Zoom in,

Let's see if you can read the sign,

"Contact surface, must surface,"

Understood, We'll contact them right now,

Ares surface comm,

Rover Two leaving the bottom

at X minus 244, Y minus 25,

depth 741 meters,

- So, how was it, Jim?

- We got the goods, We definitely got it,

Ah, that thing is phenomenal,

How you doing?

- What did you see down there?

- Oh, it was just incredible, Just incredible,

There was a huge, um...

Was it a jellyfish?

Some type of gelatinous...

Massive, Like, a meter,

We think that it was feeding

off of the, uh,

off the amphipods and the plankton

and the copepods that were next to...

- Hanging out at the lights?

- Hanging out at the light, yeah,

- How's it work?

- Man, we don't know,

- But it's there, So it's working somehow,

- Exactly,

- Life's pretty cool,

- Yeah, absolutely fantastic,

- Welcome back, Kevin,

- Thanks,

- Team Rover,

- Go team Rover!

My name is Maya Tolstoy,

and I'm a marine seismologist

at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

I study underwater volcanoes,

and particularly I study the earthquakes

that these volcanoes make.

And I'm trying to understand

how the Earth is made,

how the surface of

the planet is formed.

I'm going to be deploying

ocean-bottom seismometers.

Those are instruments

that listen to earthquakes

and other noises on the ocean floor.

In the ocean,

the light only goes so far.

And so sound allows you

to basically see the bottom of the ocean,

and to see into the ocean crust, the way

that light lets you see on the surface.

We put the instruments over the side of

the ship. They drop, they gather the data.

Normally, I don't have to dive

in order to do my job.

So it was very exciting

to finally see the environment

that I've been working on

for over a decade.

MIR two, copy,

We have a visual on you.

We are inbound.

Roger that,

- Can you see them?

- Yeah, It's out my window,

It looks like a spaceship,

Wow,

That's incredible,

That's like another planet,

It's such

an incredible world down there,

and it's so important

to the formation of our planet.

It's where two thirds

of the surface of our world was created,

and we still know so little about it.

Do you see how

they're all shiny and glassy?

- Oh, yeah, Look at that,

- That shows that it cooled superquickly,

That's just, like, it really turns

to glass, basically, To obsidian, it's called,

Look at that,

And you see how there's

hardly any sediment on it?

That's when it's really fresh,

This is brand-new crust we're looking at,

Wow,

Now, can you just imagine

being down here when this stuff erupts?

Molten rock oozing out

and hitting the freezing cold water,

I just can't imagine it,

It must have been insane,

Must look pretty cool,

For the few seconds before you die,

I miss my son.

He's five months old.

It was such a hard decision

to make to come out here.

But I think it's important to study

one of the most remarkable phenomenon

we've ever discovered

in the oceans.

MIR Two, just keep going

upslope on this heading,

The chimneys should be

at the top of this sulfide mound, Over,

Roger that,

Wow,

There it is,

All around our world,

running down the middle of the oceans

like seams on a baseball,

are these cracks,

these spreading centers,

where the crust of the planet

is literally ripping apart.

Up above,

the sea looks normal.

But two miles down,

it's a violent landscape

where fresh lava flows

out of the crack and freezes into rock.

When the sea water seeps down to the

molten rock just beneath the new crust,

it gets superheated,

far hotter than boiling.

But it can't boil, because of the intense

pressure at the bottom of the ocean.

So it comes roaring up

out of the sea floor.

When the superheated water hits the

freezing ocean, minerals condense out,

forming the chimneys,

and creating the black smoke.

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