A group of scientists are looking for clues about the origin of life in a massive chunk of rocks they pulled up from deep below the seafloor.
In the pitch-black waters at the bottom of the Atlantic is a vast array of hydrothermal vents and hot springs that, some scientists hypothesize, offer a similar environment to where life may have blossomed on Earth billions of years ago.
The region is called the Lost City, and it has been a hot spot of scientific interest for decades.
But there was one area of the Lost City that researchers couldn’t access until recently: the deep sub-seafloor rock that supports the city. Hidden within that rock could be organic molecules that hold clues to how life began.
“It sounds crazy to say that, but it’s not wrong,” Susan Q Lang, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, told Business Insider.
Lang co-led a team last year that drilled deeper into that seabed than ever before and obtained a sample that’s over 4,000 feet long. Here’s how they achieved such a feat and what they’ve found in those rock samples, so far.
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