Scientists baffled by hole in earth’s crust
In a bizarre parallel to the classic Jules Verne science fiction novel ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, written nearly 150 years ago, a team of British scientists has set sail from Tenerife to try to find out why a huge hole has opened up deep in the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
The 12-strong team left the island capital of Santa Cruz aboard the new British research ship, RRS James Cook, to examine an area some 2,000 nautical miles south west of Tenerife where the earth’s mantle is exposed to the sea floor.
Their investigations will be made possible by the latest high-tech equipment on board the new vessel, including a robotic device called Toby, which will extract rock samples at the site and film for the first time the planet’s ‘green’ interior.
The hole is some 16,000 feet below the ocean’s surface and located along a globe-spanning ridge of undersea volcanoes where the Atlantic tectonic plates have separated.
Normally, lava surges up to fill such gaps in the earth’s crust, but in this case instead of a layer of crust several kilometres thick the mantle of the earth, a very dense leafy-green rock that makes up the core of the Earth, has been exposed.
Scientists are puzzled by the appearance of this ‘open wound’ on the ocean floor, which was first detected by sonar readings taken by a surface vessel. The phenomenon defies conventional theories about how the Earth works.
The area to be studied by the scientific team is part of an underwater mountain range that spans thousands of square miles. The hole itself is reckoned to be between 10,000-13,000 feet in diameter.
