What’s in a name?
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Since 1977, scientists have discovered some 40 vent sites around the globe. Many have interesting names. A site near the “Garden of Eden” on the Galápagos Rift was named “East of Eden” (which is also a novel by John Steinbeck). In the Atlantic, the seafloor topography near the “Broken Spur” site has a series of “spurs” coming off the ridge. The “Lucky Strike” vent site was found by chance when scientists were dredging up samples of seafloor rocks. “Snake Pit” was named after the slithering mass of white, eel-like fish that scientists found living there.

In 2000, Japanese scientists discovered the first vent site in the Indian Ocean and named it after their research vessel “Kairei.” Several months later, a U.S. expedition found another Indian Ocean vent site and named it “Edmond,” in memory of John Edmond, a renowned chemist from MIT who had recently died. Edmond participated in the original 1977 Galápagos cruise and was a pioneer and leader of hydrothermal vent research.

So far, most vents have been found on volcanically active mid-ocean ridges with newly made seafloor crust. But that may be only because scientists have focused their search for vents on ridges. In December of 2000, on an expedition led by Donna Blackman of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Jeff Karson of Duke University, scientists in Alvin were surprised to find a vent field in the Atlantic Ocean that was tens of miles away from a ridge, on million-year-old seafloor crust. It had skyscraper-like structures, many stories high that were made of white carbonate material, not dark sulfide minerals. They called this unique vent site “Lost City.”

Extraterrestrial Life

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