{"id":63547,"date":"2010-09-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-oceanographer-to-lead-return-visit-to-least-inhabited-place-on-earth\/"},"modified":"2010-09-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T00:00:00","slug":"uri-oceanographer-to-lead-return-visit-to-least-inhabited-place-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2010\/09\/uri-oceanographer-to-lead-return-visit-to-least-inhabited-place-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographer to lead return visit to least inhabited place on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tStudy in South Pacific Gyre may provide insight into life on other planets<\/p>\n


\n\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 September 30, 2010 \u2013 Four 溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographers depart next week for an international research expedition to the middle of the South Pacific Gyre \u2013 an area that is as far from any continent as is possible to go on Earth\u2019s surface \u2013 to look for evidence of life far beneath the seafloor.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe expedition is a follow-up to a 2006\/2007 visit to the same sites where the scientists found so few organisms living in the shallow sediment that this region may be the least inhabited marine sediment ever explored. This year\u2019s nine-week expedition seeks to look for evidence of life in the older, deeper sediment and \u201cthe basaltic basement.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ll be drilling holes in the South Pacific seafloor through the entire sediment column and into the basaltic basement to look for evidence of life and habitability in one of the most energetically challenging environments on Earth,\u201d said Steven D\u2019Hondt, a 溏心vlog免费B站 oceanography professor who will lead the expedition. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe found very little evidence of life in the near-surface sediment, so now we\u2019re going to drill deep to see what communities are like in even older sediment and rock that\u2019s even lower in food,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n


\nThe team will depart from Tahiti on Oct. 9 aboard the 469-foot JOIDES Resolution, a drilling ship owned by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. The sediment cores they recover will then be analyzed for their chemistry and microbial communities to detect evidence of life. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cSince we found very little evidence of life in the surface sediments, there will probably be even less below,\u201d D\u2019Hondt said. <\/p>\n


\nThe research team includes 100 scientists, technicians and crew from a dozen countries around the world. In addition to D\u2019Hondt, other scientists participating from the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography include David Smith, Arthur Spivack and Dennis Graham.<\/p>\n


\nGyres are semi-still areas in the middle of the oceans where there is little wind, little current, and very little upwelling of deep water, so the water is clear and contains few nutrients. The South Pacific Gyre is the largest of Earth\u2019s gyres, encompassing an area twice the size of North America. D\u2019Hondt describes its center as \u201cthe deadest spot in the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBecause the region is so far from terrestrial sources of sediment and so few organisms live in its water, its sediment accumulates extraordinarily slowly \u2013 as few as 8 centimeters per million years. D\u2019Hondt said that the burial rate of organic matter was so low in the sediment that the principal food source for the microorganisms living there may be hydrogen released by the radioactive splitting of water due to the natural decay of elements in the sediment.<\/p>\n


\n\tA main objective of the expedition is to test whether microbial communities can be sustained by this process.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe don\u2019t know anything about life there in this deepest, oldest sediment,\u201d said D\u2019Hondt. \u201cIt could tell us about the possibility of life elsewhere. If organisms can survive there, then perhaps they can be supported by the same processes on Mars or Jupiter.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tIt is also possible that some of the microbes they find may have applications that could ultimately benefit humans.<\/p>\n


\nThe research expedition is funded by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an international scientific program that is co-sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Study in South Pacific Gyre may provide insight into life on other planets NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 September 30, 2010 \u2013 Four 溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographers depart next week for an international research expedition to the middle of the South Pacific Gyre \u2013 an area that is as far from any continent as is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}