Scientific Ocean Drilling in the news

In a groundbreaking study published in the journal Nature Communications, an international team of researchers revealed they found living microorganisms at depths previously thought to be nearly sterile. The discovery occurred during an expedition to the Amundsen Sea off the coast of West Antarctica. The team drilled hundreds of meters into the ocean floor, uncovering life in sediment that is millions of years old.

Scientists finally drilled more than a kilometer into Earth’s mantle under the Atlantic Ocean and the rocks they pulled up tell a story about life, climate, and even future energy that starts far below the waves. Working from the research vessel JOIDES Resolution, an international team recovered a continuous 1,268-meter-long core of mantle rock from beneath the seafloor at the Atlantis Massif, near the Mid Atlantic Ridge.

Back in March 2011, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off northeast Japan sent walls of water crashing into coastal towns and power plants. The tsunami killed tens of thousands of people and crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a disaster that still shapes evacuation drills and sea wall debates today.

A 40,000-year cycle in Earth’s axial tilt influenced subtropical marine productivity about 34 million years ago, during the early expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet, according to a study published in PNAS. The authors link this signal to obliquity-driven Antarctic ice-sheet variability that affected ocean circulation and nutrient delivery far from the polar region.

Cycles in the growth and decay of Antarctica’s ice sheets once shaped marine biological productivity thousands of miles away in the subtropical ocean, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Beneath the surface of the South Atlantic Ocean, scientists have found a hidden but powerful actor in the Earth’s carbon cycle, which has remained undetected in previous research. During recent deep-sea drilling voyages, scientists have found vast reserves of volcanic rubble, called breccia, which have been found to hold much more carbon dioxide than previously detected.

Striking white stucco buildings with cobalt-colored roofs draw millions of tourists each year to Santorini and other Greek islands. But the idyllic setting of the Aegean Sea harbors a hidden secret in the form of a network of underwater volcanoes capable of explosive eruptions. Researchers have now analyzed sediment cores drilled from the flanks of one of the region’s largest underwater volcanoes to estimate its eruption frequency. Explosive eruptions of Kolumbo Volcano occur every few thousand years, on average, the team found, and activity within the next few decades is unlikely.

The Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed 540 times over the past 170 million years. Usually, these reversals are relatively speedy in geological terms, taking around 10,000 years to complete. Now, however, scientists in the US, France and Japan have found evidence of much slower reversals deep in Earth’s geophysical past. Their findings could have important implications for our understanding of Earth’s climate and evolutionary history.

On Friday, Feb. 27, the geology department hosted professor Laura Guertin for a talk titled “Stories of Communicating Scientific Ocean Drilling, From Text to Textiles,” exploring the importance of storytelling in scientific research.

Earth’s magnetic field does not simply switch direction like a flipped light switch. It weakens, wanders, and reorganizes itself over thousands of years before settling again. For decades, researchers believed most of these geomagnetic reversals followed a fairly consistent timeline, usually wrapping up within about 10,000 years.