North experts to explore earth’s deep-sea secrets
EXPERTS from the North-East will
lead an international scientific team
that will explore the deep-sea secrets
of the Earth's crust.
The team from Durham University
will take part in a five-week expedition
in the Atlantic on Britain's
Royal Research Ship (RRS) James
Cook, which sails from the Azores
on Friday, May 23.
They will use explorer robots to
map individual volcanoes on the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge tectonic plate
boundary, which runs down the centre
of the Atlantic Ocean, nearly two
miles below the sea surface.
Another robot, called Isis, will collect
rock samples that will be dated
to shed more light on the timescale
of the growth of the earth's crust
and the related tectonic plates.
As tectonic plates are pulled apart
by forces in the earth, rocks deep
down in the mantle are pulled up to
fill the gap.
As the rocks rise they start to melt
and form thousands of volcanoes on
the sea floor that eventually cluster
into giant ridges.
The ridges along the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge plate boundary are each about
the size of the Malvern Hills, in
Worcestershire, and contain hundreds
of individual volcanoes.
Principal investigator Professor
Roger Searle, of Durham University's
department of earth sciences,
said: "The problem is that we don't
know how fast these volcanoes form
or if they all come from melting the
same piece of mantle rock.
"The ridges may form quickly, perhaps
in 10,000 years (about the time
since the end of the last Ice Age)
with hundreds of thousands of
years' inactivity before the next one
forms, or they may take half-a-million
years to form, the most recent
having begun before the rise of modern
humans.
"Understanding the processes
forming the crust is important, because
the whole ocean floor, some 60
per cent of the earth's surface, has
been recycled and reformed many
times over the planet's history."
Prof Searle's team will include scientists
from the National Oceanography
Centre, Southampton, the
Open University, the University of
Paris and several institutions in the
US.
Co-investigators on the project are
Durham Professors Jon Davidson
and Yaoling Niu and Dr Bramley
Murton, of the National Oceanography
Centre.
The work is funded by the Natural
Environment Research Council,
which owns and operates the RRS
James Cook.
8:23am Thursday 15th May 2008
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