* Astronomy

A multidisciplinary research team from six institutions has for the first time successfully measured a seafloor eruption at its source along the global mid-ocean ridge, the most active volcanic system on Earth. The event along the East Pacific Rise has provided researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) with a rare opportunity to observe what happens in the immediate aftermath of an eruption.
Ocean-bottom seismometers, which had been deployed by researchers from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University, detected steadily increasing levels of earthquake activity over several years leading up to 2006. Research teams from WHOI and other institutions then used towed cameras and the submersible Alvin to make a visual confirmation of the seafloor eruptions, which decimated the well-studied communities of tubeworms, mussels, and other unique organisms that had been living at the hydrothermal vents in the area.
A research paper describing the seismic data was authored by Maya Tolstoy of LDEO and includes scientists from WHOI, the University of Hawaii, Brown University, the University of Washington, the University of Florida, and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL). The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of Science, though a preliminary analysis was released on 23 November 2006 on the Science Express web site.

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JC007: Drilling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
A team of British scientists set sail on Monday to examine why a huge chunk of the earth's crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean -- a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how the earth works.
The 20-strong team aims to survey an area some 3,000 to 4,000 metres deep where the mantle -- the deep interior of the earth normally covered by a crust kilometres thick -- is exposed on the sea floor.

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Scientists are to sail to the mid-Atlantic to examine a massive "open wound" on the Earth's surface.
Dr Chris MacLeod, from Cardiff University, said the Earth's crust appeared to be completely missing in an area thousands of kilometres across.
The hole in the crust is midway between the Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
The team will survey the area, up to 5km (3 miles) under the surface, from ocean research vessel RRS James Cook.
The ship is on its inaugural voyage after being named in February.
Dr MacLeod said the hole in the Earth's crust was not unique, but was recognised as one of the most significant.
He said it was an "open wound on the surface of the Earth", where the oceanic crust, usually 6-7km thick, was simply not there.

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A seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis has made the first 3-D model of seismic wave damping — diminishing — deep in the Earth's mantle and has revealed the existence of an underground water reservoir at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.
It is the first evidence for water existing in the Earth's deep mantle.
Michael E. Wysession, Ph.D., Washington University professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, working with former graduate student Jesse Lawrence (now at the University of California, San Diego), analysed 80,000 shear waves from more than 600,000 seismograms and found a large area in Earth's lower mantle beneath eastern Asia where water is damping out, or attenuating, seismic waves from earthquakes.

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