* Astronomy

Scientists Locate Apparent Hydrothermal Vents off Antarctica

Scientists at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have found evidence of hydrothermal vents on the seafloor near Antarctica, formerly a blank spot on the map for researchers wanting to learn more about seafloor formation and the bizarre life forms drawn to these extreme environments.
Hydrothermal vents spew volcanically heated seawater from the planet's underwater mountain ranges - the vast mid-ocean ridge system, where lava erupts and new crust forms. Chemicals dissolved in those vents influence ocean chemistry and sustain a complex web of organisms, much as sunlight does on land. In recent decades more than 220 vents have been discovered worldwide, but so far no one has looked for them in the rough and frigid waters off Antarctica.
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Deepest volcanic vents discovered

What are believed to be the world's deepest undersea volcanic vents have been discovered in the Caribbean.
The vents, known as black smokers, were located 5,000m down in the Cayman Trough.
The volcanic chimneys, which spew out water hot enough to melt lead, were caught on film by a British-led team.
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Expedition to World's Deepest Undersea Volcanoes

A British scientific expedition is heading into the world's deepest volcanic rift, more than three miles beneath the waves in the Caribbean, to hunt for the deepest "black smoker" vents detected so far on the ocean floor. The team, working aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook, will use a robot submarine called Autosub6000 and a remotely-controlled deep-sea vehicle called HyBIS to reveal the features and inhabitants of the world's undersea volcanoes for the first time.
The expedition is being run by Drs Doug Connelly, Jon Copley, Bramley Murton, Kate Stansfield and Professor Paul Tyler, all from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK. They will explore the Cayman Trough - a rift in the seafloor of the Caribbean that reaches more than three miles deep. In November last year, a US-led survey of the waters of the Cayman Trough detected signs of deep-sea vents on the ocean floor below - and now the British expedition is heading out to investigate them.
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Wonder what life of Jupiter's moon, Europa, might look like? Checkout a  new species of archaebacteria, Pyrococcus CH1,discovered thriving on a mid-Atlantic ridge within a temperature range of 80 to 105°C and able to divide itself up to a hydrostatic pressure of 120 Mpa (1000 times higher than the atmospheric pressure). Alieve won't help down there.
This discovery was made by the microbiologists of the Microbiology of Extreme Environments Laboratory in partnership with the Institute of Oceanography of Xiamen (China) and the Earth Science Laboratory. This archaebacteria had been isolated from samples of the "Serpentine" cruise, during which a Franco-Russian team explored the mid-Atlantic ridge for six weeks searching for new hydrothermal vents.

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