Peer inside the underwater volcanic caves where life thrives

By Ashley Strickland, CNN

(CNN) — A mile and a half beneath the ocean’s surface, the seafloor seems nearly as alien as the surfaces of other planets.

Deep-sea volcanic ridges, formed by the collisions of tectonic plates, create underwater hot springs in an otherwise frigid environment. These hydrothermal vents belch warm towers of elements that draw clusters of animal life, such as tube worms.

Scientists have been intrigued by the vents, and the types of creatures that live around them, for half a century. There, animals develop symbiotic relationships with bacteria that use chemical reactions to produce sugars necessary for life beyond the reach of sunlight.

Now, the study of deep-sea fauna has led to the discovery of an unexpected ecosystem where life thrives in the most unlikely of places.

Ocean secrets

The arms of an underwater robot helped uncover communities of giant tube worms and snails living in volcanic caves beneath warm vents in the Pacific Ocean.

“Animals are able to live beneath hydrothermal vents, and that, to me, is mind-blowing,” said Dr. Sabine Gollner, senior scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

Scientists uncovered the habitat during a 2023 expedition to the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge in the Pacific Ocean. Overturning small portions of Earth’s crust revealed tiny tube worm larvae as well as some tube worms that reached 1.6 feet (0.5 meter) long.

The finding suggests unique ecosystems on the seafloor and within the subseafloor are connected, allowing life to thrive above and below the ocean bed.

We are family

If you’ve ever longed for carbs, it may be an instinctual craving that could predate our existence as a species.

New research has traced the evolution of a gene, called AMY1, that produces the enzyme amylase. It enables humans to break down starchy foods such as pasta, bread and potatoes for energy.

The expansion of this gene likely began hundreds of thousands of years ago — well before the beginning of agriculture, and even before Neanderthals and Homo sapiens split, when ancient humans added certain carbohydrates to their prehistoric menu.

Defying gravity

SpaceX’s powerful Starship rocket lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas, on its fifth test flight last Sunday — and this time, the trial demonstrated the rapid recovery and reusability of its rocket boosters through an unprecedented feat of engineering.

Stunning video showed a pair of massive metal pincers called “chopsticks” capturing the mega rocket booster in midair after it had broken away from the spacecraft.

Separately, luxury fashion house Prada and commercial space company Axiom Space revealed the new design for the spacesuits the Artemis III astronauts will wear on the moon.

And researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a wearable robotic system called “SuperLimbs” to help astronauts recover from falls. In the moon’s partial gravity, it took NASA astronaut Charlie Duke three attempts to get up after falling on the moon in 1972 while he tested lunar soil.

Wild kingdom

Scientists in 1854 first unearthed fossils of an alligator-size arthropod that lived 300 million years ago and resembled a giant millipede.

But many mysteries about the creature called Arthropleura have endured, and it would take another 170 years before researchers found a specimen with a complete head.

Scans of the well-preserved fossils, still trapped in stone, showed that Arthropleura had a body like a millipede, a head like a centipede and eyes like a crustacean.

The discovery is not only changing how researchers understand the way that giant arthropods lived but also sheds light on the close evolutionary connections between centipedes and millipedes.

Other worlds

Researchers strongly suspect that the subsurface ocean on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is a potentially habitable environment for life, and now NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is on its way to investigate.

The spacecraft lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday and will arrive in orbit around Jupiter and its intriguing moons in April 2030.

The probe is NASA’s largest spacecraft built for a planetary mission, and it will conduct 49 flybys of Europa, eventually coming incredibly close to its surface.

Instruments such as ice-penetrating radar will study the ocean below the moon’s thick ice shell, and a magnetometer will “sniff” particles released by plumes that rise up through cracks in the frozen surface to analyze the body of water’s composition.

Curiosities

Zoom in on these mind-expanding stories:

— Scientists detected microplastics in the breath of bottlenose dolphins living off the US Southeast coast for the first time, which suggests marine mammals are inhaling the potentially harmful particles.

— Astronomers spotted a distant galaxy that’s surprisingly similar to the Milky Way, and it could change theories about how galaxies form and the universe evolved.

— A robot designed by Yale University researchers moves like a caterpillar and can amputate its limbs and keep moving if trapped, much like a gecko can release its tail when grabbed by a predator.

— Missed out on catching a glimpse of this week’s full hunter’s moon? See photos of the most striking supermoon of the year from around the world.

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