«This is one of the hypotheses about the origin of life on Earth»
Scientists may be on the verge of a scientific breakthrough in the sacred question of how life originates after they drill deeper into the Earth than ever before.
A record-breaking study has discovered a long stretch of rock from the Earth's mantle, the layer of solid rock between the planet's inner core and outer crust, the Daily Mail reports.
Scientists have drilled a rock core more than 4,000 feet long (more than 1,200 meters) from a site in the Atlantic Ocean called the Lost City Hydrothermal Field, or simply known as the Lost City.
The findings, reported by the researchers in the journal Science, provide a closer look at the chemical reactions that allowed life to emerge in the deep ocean.
The researchers say further analysis of the rocks could help answer questions about the origins of life on Earth and how the mantle controls volcanic activity and important global cycles, the Daily Mail reports.
Led by researchers from Cardiff and Leeds universities, the scientists travelled to the Lost City, a site about 1,500 miles east of South Florida, and extracted a core of mantle rock from the nearby area.
The Lost City, the Daily Mail reports, is located along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is one of the world's largest underwater mountain ranges, stretching 6,200 miles (9,977,933 km).
Despite its name, the Lost City is not thought to be the location of the legendary sunken city of Atlantis. In fact, the British publication explains, it is a «bizarre» hydrothermal vent system in which seawater circulates beneath the seabed.
The site has attracted scientists' attention because it is home to vents up to 18 stories high — the tallest ever seen — and the fluids that form the vents are heated by seawater reacting with mantle rocks millions of years old.
It may not sound as exciting as a lost civilisation in the depths of the ocean, but the vents are extremely important because they could hold secrets about how life emerged on our planet billions of years ago, experts say.
Reactions between seawater and mantle rocks on or near the seafloor release hydrogen, which in turn forms compounds such as methane that support microbial life, says lead author Johan Lissenberg, a geologist at Cardiff University.
According to him, “this is one of the hypotheses for the origin of life on Earth.”
The researchers drilled into mantle rock 2,800 feet (about 850 meters) below the ocean’s surface using equipment aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution. The scientists recovered large sections of solid mantle rock that the researchers say should be typical of the mantle rock beneath the Lost City vents.
“This recovery was a record because previous attempts to drill into mantle rock had been difficult, penetrating to depths of only 200 meters and with relatively low recovery,” Johan Lissenberg said.
He and his colleagues documented how a mineral called olivine in the core sample reacted with seawater at different temperatures. Studying this and other reactions between seawater and minerals in mantle rocks, Lissenberg emphasizes, could help scientists understand how microbial life first formed in the deep ocean.