Among the discoveries scientists will reveal in those sessions are the first hydrothermal fields found in the Arctic Ocean (paper OS21C-01), and in the south Atlantic (papers OS21C-04 and -05), the first hydrothermal megaplume found in the Indian Ocean (papers OS21C-03 and OS33A), a new type of seafloor hydrothermal field fueled by chemical reactions rather than volcanism with implications for the origin of life (papers OS21C-06 and -07), and a new understanding of the relationship between fluid flow and earthquakes (paper OS22A-07).
Rona, a marine geologist at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Colin Devey of the University of Kiel; Robert Reves-Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Bramley Murton of the British National Oceanography Center; and Jerome Dyment of the French Institute of the Physics of the Globe are co-conveners of the sessions.
The Monday press conference describing the discoveries will take place in the press room on Level 2 of the Moscone Center. The two special sessions will be held back-to-back Tuesday morning, beginning at 8 a.m. in Salon 8 at the Marriott Hotel. The poster session opens at 1:40 p.m. Wednesday on Level 2 at Moscone Center.
For Rona, the discoveries are a culmination of a 10-year search that began with his finding the first "black smokers" on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge a submerged volcanic mountain range that extends along the center of the North and South Atlantic oceans.
"After the hot hydrothermal vents, known as 'black smokers,' were discovered on t
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Contact: Ken Branson
kbranson@ur.rutgers.edu
732-932-7084
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
28-Nov-2005