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Science & technology | Life finds a way

Tubeworms live beneath the planetary crust around deep-sea vents

The conditions are hot, sulphurous and low in oxygen

An eelpout swims by a tower of tubeworms at the Tica Vent.Photograph:
ROV SuBastian/Schmidt Ocean Institute
Oct 16th 2024
Share

HYDROTHERMAL VENTS are the planet's exhaust pipes. Kilometres below
the ocean surface, they relentlessly belch out searing hot water rife
with harsh chemicals from beneath Earth's crust. When they were first
discovered in 1977, nobody expected these inhospitable sites to bear
signs of life. And yet, thriving alongside these vents were colonies
of tubeworms, mussels and clams entirely new to science. It is hard
to think of an environment that could be more hostile. Now, however,
new work is revealing evidence that these animals are raising their
young in just such a place: the fractured rocks underneath the vents
themselves.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the
print edition under the headline "Hunting tubeworms"

Science & technology October 19th 2024

  * SpaceX is NASA's biggest lunar rival
  * Tubeworms live beneath the planetary crust around deep-sea vents
  * Could life exist on one of Jupiter's moons?

[20241019_DE_US]

From the October 19th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition
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A portion of the Moon looms large just beyond the Orion spacecraft.

SpaceX is NASA's biggest lunar rival

The company's successes are also showing up the agency's failings

[20241019_BLP902]

Elon Musk's SpaceX has achieved something extraordinary

If SpaceX can land and reuse the most powerful rocket ever made what
can't it do?

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Europa Clipper spacecraft is built and tested at Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena.

Could life exist on one of Jupiter's moons?

A spacecraft heading to Europa is designed to find out

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Noise-dampening tech could make ships less disruptive to marine life

Solutions include bendy propellers and "acoustic black holes"

Meet Japan's hitchhiking fish

Medaka catch rides on obliging birds, confirming one of Darwin's
hunches

AI wins big at the Nobels

Awards went to the discoverers of micro-RNA, pioneers of
artificial-intelligence models and those using them for
protein-structure prediction

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