• Question: do you think there are worlds under the sea?

    Asked by rarr to Tom, Stephen, Meeks on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Tom Hartley

      Tom Hartley answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      If you mean unknown environments that might contain new and undiscovered things (such as animals and plants), yes. We’ve only just begun our exploration of the deep ocean and already lots of surprising discoveries have been made including independent ecosystems where all the plants and animals get their energy from geothermal vents (so they don’t need sunlight at all). I am one of those people who tends to believe that there will be something interesting out there in the unknown, and I think it’s more likely that there’s something new we’ve never encountered than that it’s just sand and mud. But that probably says more about me than what’s on the bottom of the sea.

    • Photo: Stephen Curry

      Stephen Curry answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Not worlds that were ever inhabited by humans (except ancient cities that have sunk).

      But there is still a whole natural world to explore down there that we are only beginning to find out about. It wasn’t so long ago that life was discovered near volcanic vents under the sea – where you have microorganisms growing that can survive in temperatures of 95°C. Indeed we use some of the enzymes from these bugs in molecular biology experiments. There is an organism with a lovely name – Pyrococcus furiousus (PFu) – from which one can extract a polymerase enzyme. This is used in the polymerase chain reaction which is a neat way of making millions of copies of any piece of DNA. We do this almost every week in the lab.

      Plus there are lots of weird fish down there…

    • Photo: Marieke Navin

      Marieke Navin answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      There are definitely worlds under the sea!

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