Author: Matthew Taub / Source: Atlas Obscura

In some places, deep at the very bottom of the ocean, nearly as far out of sight as possible, streams of scalding water burst through openings in the seafloor called hydrothermal vents. Researchers affiliated with the Schmidt Ocean Institute in Palo Alto, California, recently shared what they found in a newly discovered vent field in the Pescadero Basin, on the floor of Mexico’s Gulf of California.
The finds demonstrate just how vibrant and bizarre the invisible, mysterious, and thoroughly unexplored seafloor can be. In a release, the scientists describe “steaming hot sediments laden with orange-colored oil,” microbes that are blue for some unknown reason, and “shimmering” water that lends the vent field its name: Jaich Maa, or “liquid metal” in an indigenous language of the Baja Peninsula. The researchers report watching this gleaming water spill up from calcite mounds—some of…
The post Found: Upside-Down Waterfalls, Steaming Mud, and Blue Microbes on the Ocean Floor appeared first on FeedBox.