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Science

Arctic Ocean Survey May Reveal Lost World 194

Posted by Hemos from the and-nessie-will-be-there dept.
core plexus writes " A new survey of the depths of the ice-capped Arctic Ocean as reported at Reuters, BBC, and others, could reveal a lost world of living fossils and exotic new species from jellyfish to giant squid, scientists said on Thursday. They speculated that Arctic waters might hide creatures known only from fossils, such as trilobites that flourished 300 million years ago. The international scheme will include probing a 12,470-foot abyss off Canada described by project leaders as the "world's oldest sea water -- a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia, walled by steep ridges and lidded with ice." Bring on the "Jurassic Park" references."
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Arctic Ocean Survey May Reveal Lost World More

Arctic Ocean Survey May Reveal Lost World

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  • The horrors of the deep (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:20AM (#9536825)
    They expect only jellyfish and squids?! Have we learned nothing? What if we awaken some age-old form of life [bbc.co.uk] that has been lying dormant in the Earth's seabeds for thousands of years, just waiting fot the perfect opportunity to leap out and assimilate us all?

    Well... dunno about you, but I, for one, pre-emptively welcome our new dark-and-gooey overlords!

  • Sound Familiar? (Score:4, Funny)

    by s0rbix ( 629316 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:24AM (#9536846)
    Just as long as Ed Harris isn't leading the expedition...

  • Must we? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AndyMouse GoHard ( 210170 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:25AM (#9536850)
    "... -- a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia..."

    Until we taint it with our presence.

    • Re:Must we? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Eudial ( 590661 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @10:47AM (#9537322)
      Until we taint it with our presence.

      True,the modern bacteria we're going to bring will literarlly obliderate any life that exists in there.

    • Re:Must we? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mattyrobinson69 ( 751521 )
      couldn't birds do this? pick up something from somewhere else and drop it into a hole in the ice?

  • ah the ocean (Score:5, Informative)

    by spacerodent ( 790183 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:25AM (#9536852)
    as an ocean engineer I feel compelled to point out that exploring the depths of the ocean is an assload harder than exploring space. Accordingly we've explored far less of it than space. Technologies are advancing but most of them are directed towards making existing technologies more efficient. We really don't have any improvments for reaching really deep areas and are still using technology pioneered in the 70s.

    • Re:ah the ocean (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:40AM (#9536932)
      Accordingly we've explored far less of it than space.

      I think there is a lot more space than there is ocean. we've explored nearly 0% of space, significantly lower than the percentage of ocean explored.

      • Re:ah the ocean (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Sique ( 173459 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @10:05AM (#9537085) Homepage
        You could use a different approach. Consider a geometrical inversion of the world at the surface of the earth, thus the center of the earth gets mapped to infinity, by setting the radius of the earth to 1 and mapping every vector of the length d to a certain point A to the vector in the same direction, but of 1/d length, thus pointing to A'.

        For instance the moon is about 50 times the radius of the earth away, so his image would be projected somewhere at 1/50 of the earth's radius, or just 85mls from the center of the earth. You can use other scaling functions but you will always end with a similar discrepancy. If you use 1/sqrt(d), A' will be somewhere at about 700mls from the center of the earth... still far away from everything we reached until now.

        There have been men on the moon, but no one deeper than 8mls from the earth's surface. Basicly we barely have scratched the surface of the earth yet, with even the deepest holes ever drilled lurking somewhere at the 7mls point (don't have the current number right here).

      • Re:ah the ocean (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 26, 2004 @10:08AM (#9537103)
        Actually, the degree to which we have probed space with light and radio telescopes FAR exceeds that of the world's oceans. A vaccuum allows most forms of energy to travel through it, while water does a great job of attenuating most EM radiation, leaving sound to be the primary method of remote imaging.
        Of course we could never have those beautiful global shaded relief seafloor images if it wasn't for satellite alimetry, so i guess its all related.

        • Re:ah the ocean (Score:3, Insightful)

          by argStyopa ( 232550 )
          I think his/her point is that

          (anything)/(finite number) > (anything)/(infinity)

          Thus the percentage of ocean explored will always be higher than space explored, even when we've explored the entirety of our galaxy.

    • Re:ah the ocean (Score:5, Funny)

      by ptomblin ( 1378 ) <ptomblin@xcski.com> on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:52AM (#9537015) Homepage Journal
      Futurama quote:

      "We're taking over 150 atmospheres of pressure!"

      "How many atmospheres can this ship take?"

      "Well, it's a spaceship, so I'd say anywhere between 0 and 1."
    • interesting that a guy with the name spacerodent and website spaceratspants is more interested in deep ocean exploration than space exploration...

    • Re:ah the ocean (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      we know more about the moon's behind than we do the ocean's bottom.

    • Re:ah the ocean (Score:5, Funny)

      by Darby ( 84953 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @11:49AM (#9537674)
      as an ocean engineer I feel compelled to point out that exploring the depths of the ocean is an assload harder than exploring space.

      Yeah, but do you run into problems converting between imperial assloads and metric assloads?

    • Re:ah the ocean (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mikael ( 484 )
      You might want to visit this link [hero.ac.uk] and read the article with the quote "Two thirds of the world's surface is covered by water, yet more people have walked on the moon than visited the deepest parts of our oceans.".

      • Re:ah the ocean (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Forge ( 2456 )
        That's because it dosn't get harder. Once you have achived orbit it's simply a matter more efficent engines and larger volumes of fuel/life suport consumebles.

        I.e. With a few years suply of food and enogh fuel for the trib the curent space shutles could make a trip to Mars.

        The ocean is diferent. I can go down to 15 feet with no equptment at all. Just a pair of shorts. As you get deaper the requierd equiptment gets more complex. To dive to 200 feet you need 3 air tanks with diferent mixtures.

        I hope y
        • space shutles could make a trip to Mars.
          The ocean is diferent. I can go down to 15 feet with no equptment at all. Just a pair of shorts.

          Pffft! I can do it whithout shorts! ;-)
    • As a space engineer (really, I work for NASA) I feel compelled to point out that exploring space is an assload harder than exploring the ocean. Accordingly, we've explored far less of it than the oceans (as a percentage of total volume). [Space] technologies are stagnating because most of the NASA beauracracy is directed towards making existing technologies less efficient. We (NASA) really don't have any improvements for reaching really deep space areas and are still using technology pioneered in the 60s
      • Accordingly, we've explored far less of it than the oceans (as a percentage of total volume)

        Thank you for that. Space is rather huge, so I don't think it is a fair comparison. And looking at indirect exploration we do know alot more about space than our own oceans.

  • The Mirror Ocean from "Megalodon" (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mad Man ( 166674 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:27AM (#9536864)

    Bring on the "Jurassic Park" references."


    More like this year's straight-to-video shark movie Megalodon [imdb.com]:


    Oil...the quest for it is unrelenting. The search for new reserves of the 'black gold' never-ends and leading the search is Nexecon Petroleum and its flagship-the largest drilling and refining platform ever constructed-'Colossus" located in the freezing North Atlantic waters off the coast of Greenland.

    'Colossus' will drill deeper than any rig ever has, a fact that gratifies Nexecon CEO, Peter Brazier, but that has geologists the world over up in arms, concerned that delicate ocean floor fault lines could be disturbed with catastrophic effects. Skeptical news reporter Christen Giddings and her cameraman Jake Thompson are invited by Braziera to document the safety of 'Colossus.'

    The powerful drill tears through the seabed, striking a rich oil deposit. As the drill penetrates further, it ruptures a fissure that reveals a second 'mirror' ocean that has existed beneath ours for millions of years. An ocean teeming with prehistoric life. As the choking oil posions the water, the frenzied creatures swarm for the surface.

    Colossus buckles under the onslaught. Brazier, Christen, and a team of engineers descend in Colossus' glass elevator to assess the damage and come face to face with the most powerful oceanic predator that ever lived. Carcharodon Megalodon. The giant ancestor of the Great White Shark. This eleven-ton 'killing machine' quickly stakes its territory in the waters surrounding Colossus with disasterous and horrific consequences, destroying and devouring anything in its path.

    Now fate will pull them together as they wager their changes of survival against the most fearsome creature that ever dominated the ocean, and pit the technology and machinery of man against beast. Megalodon...sixty feet of prehistoric terror.

    • i read a shitty book about somthing like that once. And the book was serious heh. While the whole 2nd ocean thing is retarded the idea that very large sea life could go unnoticed isnt that far fetched. Giant squid have yet to be video taped or witnessed except in larve form (when they are near the surface). The adults are 40-60 feet long and we've never found more than the bits and pieces that wash up on shore when they come near the surface to breed. Now imagine something like that which never comes to the
    • I saw this: it was the crappiest movie I think I may ever have seen. The graphics were N64 level. But it was still a giant killer shark picture, so ...

      'jfb

  • pandora's box? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Garion Maki ( 791172 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:30AM (#9536880)
    considering that that pool is completely sealed from the outside world would mean that anything in it isn't resistant to infections from the outside world or the other way around...

    so couldent it be that once humans put a crack in that icy shield that protects the pool, that some human deseases, to which humans have already build a resistance, that these deseases infect the ancient inhabitants of that pool, creating a slaughter among them... or the other way around...

    so... altho the stuff they'll find can prove valuble to science, I would aproach with caution if I was them...
  • a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia, walled by steep ridges and lidded with ice

    Who put the word "living" in there?
    That sounds more like a deep, lidded, watery grave.
    There won't be photosynthesis nor water circulation to supply oxygen. There will only be something alive if there is a geologic heat source.

    • 30 million year old germ (Score:5, Informative)

      by vijaya_chandra ( 618284 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @10:06AM (#9537086)
      You can check this [panspermia.org] for info about some bacteria that survive in vacuum and some bacteria that have actually been declared "living" after 30 million years

      The article says about spores,
      "In terms of our computer analogy, a bacterial spore is like a handheld calculator that has repackaged itself into its original protective shipping carton and turned itself off."

      I would love to have one such calculator

  • "Its a Unix system.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:36AM (#9536913) Homepage
    I know this!" Oh, other Jurassic Park references?

    (and before anyone replies, i know that the 3d file manager for irix [sgi.com] actually does exist...)

  • Jurrassic Park? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) * <ellem52@gmai l . c om> on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:37AM (#9536914) Homepage Journal
    How about Mountains Of Madness? Cthulhu awaits!

    See? [mac.com]

    • Re:Jurrassic Park? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You fail your course in eldritch lore at Arkham University.
      The mountains of madness are in antarctica, and was home to Shoggoths (and the strange unnamed creatures which created them, and against which the Shoggoths rebelled).
      Cthulhu, however, lies resting in R'lyeth, which is also somewhere on the southern part of the globe, so no risk of waking him with this little project.

      • OMG. You don't still believe in the North and South Pole do you? Lemme guess the Earth is an orb and rotates around the "sun" in an "orbit".

        Good grief has The Bible taught you nothing?

  • Link to a previous expedition (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Internet Ninja ( 20767 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:38AM (#9536921) Homepage
    Canada Basin has already been checked out in a mission in 2002 which you can read about here [noaa.gov]. I guess this time round it's so they can have a jolly good look. I wonder if they'll find any aluminium cans or plastic bags at the bottom :)

    As one reader pointed out, exploring the deep ocean is harder than space. I guess that's why they felt compelled to put a flag [noaa.gov] at the bottom. :)

  • This May Hurt A Bit (Score:4, Funny)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:38AM (#9536923) Journal
    Remove the icy lid with a nuclear bomb.
    Sometimes the world needs Godzilla.

  • Living fossils (Score:5, Informative)

    by niktesla ( 761443 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:39AM (#9536928) Homepage
    This is the world's refrigerator where change has happened far more slowly than in other oceans

    If its anything like my fridge, they'll find new life alright! But seriously, I think its funny how many "living fossils" were discovered by accident. Examples: ratfish [reuters.com], coelacanth [dinofish.com], wollemi pine [earthsci.org], etc.

  • Bring on the "Jurassic Park" references.

    Its a UNIX system! I know this!!!

    Thats all I remember from Jurassic Park, and I am not sure how it applies...

  • Practicle joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by wazzzup ( 172351 ) <astromac@nOsPaM.fastmail.fm> on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:41AM (#9536946)

    I wish I could play a good practical joke on these guys a la the Dino the Dinosaur placed in front of a webcam at some New Zealand volcano [thesciencesite.info].

    Perhaps a printout from Outlook conspicously placed on the ocean floor that reads "J3llyF1sh, Squ1d - 1ncr3ase your t3ntacle s1ze by at l3ast one f0ot."

  • forget jurassic park (Score:3, Funny)

    by bigattichouse ( 527527 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:47AM (#9536983) Homepage
    I think Cthulhu references are more appropriate.

  • Arctic climate change (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dankelley ( 573611 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @09:53AM (#9537017)
    One of the big worries about the Arctic is climate change. Much of the ecosystem relies on the presence of ice, and this ice seems to be disappearing. See fig 16.3 of the IPCC report [grida.no] for a timeseries going back 100 years. In the past few decades we have had adequate measurements of wate temperature in the Actic, and it appears to be rising; see the diagrams in a recent essay [noaa.gov] at the NOAA site, for example.

    As ice changes, so does the ecosystem. Polar bears cannot walk on water, for example.

    There are also global consequence of Arctic change that worry climate scientists. For one thing, there is a nonlinear feedback loop since ice has a high albedo. Thus, ice reflects solar radiation back to space, which keeps the system cool. But water has a much lower albedo than ice. This yields a nonlinear feedback loop. Melting ice creates open water, which absorbs more heat, which melts more ice. There was a time when USSR scientists suggested we could open up a northwest passage through the Arctic simply by painting the ice black, setting this feedback loop into action. Of course, if the ice melts, navigation will be easier through the Arctic. Traffic may avoid Panama and go through a more direct route. Part of this traffic could be oil tankers, which can run aground, causing great damage to a system already damaged by the climate change.

    • As ice changes, so does the ecosystem. Polar bears cannot walk on water, for example.

      No, they swim so well that some scientist classify them as marine animals...
      • True enough, but they don't *hunt* in open water. Less ice == less bears; you can see it happening in my old stomping grounds of Hudson Bay, where decreased ice cover is marginalizing the bear population.

        (My folks are retired arctic zoologists, I grew up in the Canadian arctic, and the climate change scenarios aren't pretty. Not so coincidentally, their last expedition was SHEBA/JOIS, the first international scientific expedition to use the Louis St. Laurent as a platform.)
    • the smart ones would migrate south to solid land and change to meet the climate changes.(over time that is)

      nature survives, it always will, if we fuck it up, it will change to remedy the inbalance, the fear isnt losing nature or destroying the earth, it's the matter of nature destroying us to make the balance right again.
      We lose tons of species every day, either ones we dont know about and some we do, it's called natural selection, if one species isnt able to survive and adapt to change, manmade or nature
    • Oil has been leaking into Arctic waters off the North Slope of Alaska for many thousands of years. It's how the North Slope oil deposits were discovered. The same situation has existed in many other places.

      As for climate change, it is inevitable. There are fossils of large reptiles in Arctic Alaska [blm.gov], and evidence [alaska.edu] of vast, tropical forests in other parts of Alaska [alaska.edu]. Many of these were buried under thousands of feet of ice until recently (~9,000 years ago).

      And polar bears spend time on land during the summer,

  • here are some pages pictures taken from norfanz [oceans.gov.au], the last major survey of deep aquatic life

    as reported here of course [slashdot.org]

    those are some weird looking animals

  • hmm (Score:4, Funny)

    by Raagshinnah ( 670749 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @10:10AM (#9537109)
    "a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia, walled by steep ridges and lidded with ice."

    You mean quebec?

  • >> "world's oldest sea water -- a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia, walled by steep ridges and lidded with ice."

    Until we came along and screwed up yet another ecosystem beyond repair. Can't we just leave shit alone?

  • Familier? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bandman ( 86149 ) <bandman@nOsPAM.gmail.com> on Saturday June 26, 2004 @10:51AM (#9537345) Homepage
    I think I saw an X Files about this...

    it didn't end well.

    On the other hand, I'd like a miniature pet trilobyte...
  • Imagine using this thousand of years old water to make the perfect brew. Take that stuff made with Rocky mountains water elsewhere Coors, we've got pre-historic water in our frosty beverages!
  • Maybe THAT is where Atlantis is!
  • I'm thinking more about 'day after' references.. they're gonna drill the ice shelf right?

    and a big chunk is going to fall off?

  • Not "Jurassic Park" by Cthulhu (Score:3)

    by wintermute42 ( 710554 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @12:55PM (#9538049) Homepage

    "world's oldest sea water -- a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia, walled by steep ridges and lidded with ice." Bring on the "Jurassic Park" references."

    For those of us who have studied that dread work, the Necronomicon [digital-brilliance.com], the truth is not Jurassic Part but the the Elder Gods. Yes, my slashdot fellow readers, what will be found are those who were here before us. Trapped for millions of years behind the walls of ice will be found those who came from beyond. Behind the icy barriers they have waited, only now to be awakened. We can at least take heart in the fact that this is the northern polar climbs. If it were the cold icy regions of the south pole (where the Mountains of Maddness lie), those released elder Gods would come forth to gorge on penguins. The horror! The rejoicing in Redmond! None of us can question which operating system Cthulhu would use! At least we are spared this fate.

  • They will find death. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GISGEOLOGYGEEK ( 708023 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @01:36PM (#9538318)
    They won't find great new ecologies full of living fossils.

    They will find the remains of those ecologies, that have died in only the last 50 -60 years ... poisoned from the massive dumping of radioactive waste into the Arctic Ocean basin by the former Soviet Union.

  • From the preface to The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhensitsyn:

    "In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in

    Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream -- and in it were found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preserved in so fresh a state, th

  • Of course, everyone knows that... (Score:3, Funny)

    by KC7GR ( 473279 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @10:30PM (#9540602) Homepage Journal
    Trilobytes were the equivalent of our modern bytes in the Atlantean Computer Network. Each trilobyte represented three bits, based on an ancient logic system of 'Yes,' 'No,' and 'Maybe.'

    Hey, we had to get the idea of 'fuzzy logic' from somewhere! ;-)

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