Sunless under water lost city of bacteria
7 March 2005
by Richard
Conan-Davies
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A group of oceanographers and scientists have discovered a lost city of biological life at the bottom of the ocean far away from any sun light. About 91 metres by 304 metres, The Lost City has 30 large vents, some 9 metres to 60 metres tall. It also contains hundreds of smaller structures including steep cliffs behind the field are layered with carbonate. Scientists named it the Lost City partly because it sits on a seafloor mountain named the Atlantis Massif. The bacterial microbes get energy by using methane and hydrogen. This is quite different to the creatures that were discovered in the 1970s at the famous "black smokers" that used Carbon dioxide as their source of energy. Lead author of a paper published in science magazine, Deborah Kelley, of University of Washington explained that this discovery of life in very unusual and inhospititable places on Earth gives further hope to finding life on other planets. |
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