Scientists could be on the verge of a scientific breakthrough into how life originates after drilling deeper into the Earth than ever before.
The study that broke records unearthed a long section of rocks from Earth’s mantle – the layer of solid rock between the planet’s inner core and outer crust.
They drilled a rock core more than 4,000 feet long at a location in the Atlantic Ocean called the “Lost City Hydrothermal Field” or, more commonly, the “Lost City.”
Their findings, presented in the journal Science, offer a closer look at the chemical reactions that allowed life to emerge in the deep ocean.
Scientists have extracted a huge sample of Earth’s mantle after drilling deeper into the planet than ever before.
With further analysis, the rocks will help answer questions about the origins of life on Earth and how the mantle drives volcanic activity and important global cycles, researchers say.
Led by researchers from Cardiff and Leeds Universities, the scientists traveled to the Lost City, a spot about 1,500 miles east of South Florida, and extracted a core of mantle rock from a nearby site.
The Lost City is located along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, one of the largest underwater mountain ranges in the world, stretching 6,200 miles in length.
Despite what the name suggests, the Lost City is not the site of the sunken Atlantis. It is actually a strange hydrothermal vent system where seawater circulates beneath the seabed.
The researchers drilled their core near the “Lost City,” a system of hydrothermal vents located along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
It caught the attention of scientists because it produces vents up to 18 stories high – the tallest ever seen – and the fluids that form these vents are heated by seawater reacting with rocks from the mantle that are millions of years old.
That may not sound as exciting as a mysterious civilization lost in the ocean, but these vents are hugely important as they could hold secrets about how life emerged on our planet billions of years ago, experts say.
“The reaction between seawater and mantle rocks at or near the seafloor releases hydrogen, which in turn forms compounds such as methane that support microbial life,” said study lead author Johan Lissenberg, a geologist at Cardiff University.
‘This is one of the hypotheses about the origin of life on Earth.’
Lead researcher Johan Lissenberg of Cardiff University and two colleagues analyse the rock sample from the mantle. Their first findings have already been surprising.
Researchers drilled into mantle rock 2,800 feet below the ocean surface using equipment aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution.
They recovered large sections of continuous mantle rock, which should be a representative sample of the mantle rock beneath the Lost City vents, the researchers said.
“The recovery is a record, as previous attempts to drill mantle rocks have been difficult, with penetration no greater than 200 meters (656 feet) and relatively low rock recovery,” Lissenberg said.
He and his colleagues documented how a mineral called olivine in the core sample had reacted with seawater at various temperatures.
Studying this and other reactions between seawater and minerals in mantle rocks could help scientists understand how microbial life formed in the deep ocean, Lissenberg said.
The researchers also made some surprising early discoveries about the composition of the core sample: They found a longer melting period (melt milling) than expected.
