From The University of Bremen [Universität Bremen (DE)
Via
7.1.24
MICHELLE STARR
The telltale ‘shimmer’ as volcanic heat is released into the water at the bottom of the sea. (MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen)
A stunning new wonderland has been discovered, hidden deep beneath the ocean waves of the Arctic Circle.
Off the coast of Svalbard, in Norway, more than 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) down, a field of hydrothermal vents unfolds along the Knipovich Ridge, an underwater mountain range previously thought to be fairly unremarkable.
Instead, like underfloor heating, volcanic activity below the seafloor causes heat to seep through, creating havens of warmth and chemical reactions where life can gather and thrive.
The field, measuring at least a kilometer in length and 200 meters in width, has been named Jøtul, for the giants of Norse mythology that live beneath mountains. In this case, the giant is Earth’s internal processes, released through cracks in the seafloor.
“Water penetrates into the ocean floor where it is heated by magma. The overheated water then rises back to the sea floor through cracks and fissures,” explains marine geologist Gerhard Bohrmann of the University of Bremen in Germany.
“On its way up the fluid becomes enriched in minerals and materials dissolved out of the oceanic crustal rocks. These fluids often seep out again at the sea floor through tube-like chimneys called black smokers, where metal-rich minerals are then precipitated.”
An active black smoker releasing minerals into the water. (MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen)
Hydrothermal vent fields are some of the most interesting undersea environments. They’re usually very deep beneath the ocean surface, so far down that light from the Sun can’t penetrate the vast volume of water above them.
At these depths, conditions are permanently dark, freezing cold, and surrounded by crushing pressures.
This environment isn’t exactly conducive to life, but hydrothermal vents act as strange oases. The minerals seeping out and dissolving in the water provide the basis for a food web reliant, not on photosynthesis as most life closer to the surface is, but chemosynthesis – harnessing chemical reactions for energy, rather than sunlight.
These environs make for a much more dynamic and thriving deep seafloor than might be expected, giving us a clue about how life might emerge on worlds very different from our own.
Finding hydrothermal fields is important also for trying to protect Earth’s biodiversity, and learning more about how it functions, as well as understanding how the planet itself functions and changes over time.
The Jøtul Field is located right on the boundary between two of Earth’s tectonic plates, on what is known as a slow spreading ridge. The plates are very slowly moving away from each other, which causes the crust to stretch, and valleys and ridges to develop.
Scientists have detected hydrothermal activity along almost all the ridges north of Iceland, but the Knipovich Ridge remained a glaring exception.
That was, until 2022. Scientists had seen hints of hydrothermal chemistry in the region, so they took a submersible remotely-operated vehicle to the ridge to see if they could find the source of it.
A chimney vent crawling with amphipods enjoying the warm water. (MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen)
They drove the MARUM-QUEST submersible more than 3 kilometers down to the seafloor, where it took images and sampled the waters. And there, they found the Jøtul Field – a large region of seafloor with both extinct and active hydrothermal vents, and the telltale shimmer of volcanic heat seeping into the water.
It’s a magnificent find, one that fills in a significant and previously puzzling gap in the hydrothermal layout of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea.
“The Jøtul hydrothermal field is the first to be discovered along the 500-kilometer-long ultraslow-spreading Knipovich Ridge and is significant, because it represents a new link between the active hydrothermal systems of Loki’s Castle at the bend of Mohns and Knipovich Ridges and the Aurora hydrothermal field of the Gakkel Ridge,” the researchers write in their paper.
“Since these systems are separated by a distance of more than 1,000 kilometers, the discovery of the Jøtul hydrothermal field is important for the understanding of chemosynthetic faunal community distribution.”
In addition, the new discovery can help provide insights into ocean chemistry, and how the waters that clothe our world help circulate and distribute material such as carbon.
The research has been published in Scientific Reports.
Figure 1
(A) Map of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea (GEBCO data) with locations of active seafloor spreading centers and the study area. (B) Detailed map of the study area (ship-based multibeam data acquired during cruise MSM109) including the Brøgger Axial Volcanic Ridge (AVR) and the newly discovered hydrothermal active area called Jøtul hydrothermal field. (C) AUV-based bathymetry of the Jøtul hydrothermal field (data acquired during cruise MSM109 and provided by the Norwegian Offshore Directorate). Track lines of ROV dives are shown and track portions, where hydrothermal activity was visually observed, are marked in yellow. Four sites were sampled for fluids during MSM109 and are indicated by circles.
See the science paper for further instructive material with images.
See the full article here.
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The University of Bremen [Universität Bremen] (DE) is a public university with approximately 23,500 people from 115 countries. It is one of 11 institutions which were successful in the category “Institutional Strategies” of the Excellence Initiative launched by the Federal Government and the Federal States in 2012. The university was also successful in the categories “Graduate Schools” and “Clusters of Excellence” of the initiative.
Some of the paths that were taken in the early days of the university, also referred to as the “Bremen model”, have since become characteristics of modern universities, such as interdisciplinary, explorative learning, social relevance to practice-oriented project studies which enjoy a high reputation in the academic world as well as in business and industry.
Though Bremen became a university city only recently, higher education in Bremen has a long tradition. The Bremen Latin School was upgraded to “Gymnasium Academicum” in 1584. In 1610 it was transformed into “Gymnasium Illustre”. Under Napoleonic rule, in 1811 the institution of a “French-Bremen University” was considered. In 1971 the University of Bremen opened its doors.
At the beginning of the 1970s, the university was set up as a “science complex” in a city oriented towards trade and seafaring that had no experience with academia, particularly not with leftist professors. University, business and the public in the region did not move closer together until the 1980s, through the foundation of the natural science and engineering departments, co-operation with the newly founded Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven (1980), as well as the development of the co-located technology park (from 1988). Other important factors were the initial success in setting up collaborative research centres and in the acquisition of considerable of external funds. The mathematics professor Jürgen Timm, elected university rector in 1982, was largely responsible for this turnaround.
As a consequence, the University of Bremen improved in research rankings, gained national recognition, and established a number of endowment professorships. Research excellence and its interdisciplinary profile is reflected in the establishment of numerous research centers and programs funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). These currently include eight collaborative research centers and the Research Center of Ocean Margins, one of only six national research centers of the DFG.
These are the twelve faculties into which the university is divided:
Faculty 1: Physics/Electrical Engineering
Faculty 2: Biology/Chemistry
Faculty 3: Mathematics/Computer Science
Faculty 4: Production Engineering – Mechanical Engineering & Process Engineering
Faculty 5: Geosciences
Faculty 6: Law
Faculty 7: Business Studies and Economics
Faculty 8: Social Sciences
Faculty 9: Cultural Studies
Faculty 10: Languages and Literary Studies
Faculty 11: Human and Health Sciences
Faculty 12: Pedagogy and Educational Sciences
Admission to University of Bremen is highly competitive with big differences in the admission rates between programs.[7] the overall undergraduate admission rate has been around 16%.
The University of Bremen offers 118 different programs. Each year the University of Bremen awards the Berninghausen Prize for excellent teaching.
The University of Bremen is a research university. It has 12 faculties, but focuses its research on 6 interdisciplinary high-profile areas. They are (1) marine, polar and climate research, (2) social change, social policy, and the state, (3) materials science and production engineering, (4) minds media machines (5) logistics and (6) health sciences.
Collaborative Research Centers (“Sonderforschungsbereiche” (SFB)
The university has the following SFBs:
SFB 1320: Everyday Activity Science and Engineering (EASE) (2017–)
SFB 1232: From Colored States to Evolutionary Construction Materials (2016-)
TRR 136: Function-oriented Manufacturing based on Characteristic Process Signatures (2014–)
SFB 747: Micro Cold Forming – Processes, Characterization, Optimization (2007–)
SFB 1342: The Global Dynamics of Social Policy (2018-)
The University of Bremen is also involved in the following special research areas:
TRR 172: Artic Amplification: Climate Relevant Atmospheric and Surface Processes, and Feedback Mechanisms (AC) (2016–)
TRR 181: Energy transfer in the atmosphere and in the ocean (2016–)
According to the QS World University Rankings, the University of Bremen was placed very highly globally and within its national context. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the university was positioned very highly worldwide and nationally. The ARWU World Rankings also showed a similar trend, with the university ranked very highly globally and nationally.