Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

We are at the beginning of what will probably turn out to be one of the most important international science efforts ever undertaken.  There’s going to be a two-year long International Polar ‘Year’ starting this month.  There’ve been three polar ‘years’ in the last 125 years when scientists from all over the world banded together to study one of the last ‘wild’ places; Earth’s poles.  The first was in 1882; the second was 50 years later in 1932, and the last was 25 years later in 1957.  This one, 50 years later, will probably give us much greater insight into the causes and consequences of global warming and I’ll be featuring the IPY in several of my upcoming articles.  To learn more about this important scientific effort, visit www.thedeepradioshow.com and the website of the International Polar Year www.ipy.org

Although I am certainly dating myself, I remember the last polar year in 1957.  I was a brand-new student and My Weekly Reader was full of news about it.  The Polar Year in 1957 wasn’t just about the poles, however.  Its official designation was the International Geophysical year and the scientists of the time hoped to redirect the new technology developed in WWII (for example: rockets and radar) to peaceful scientific purposes.  During the IGY, continental drift was confirmed, the Van Allen radiation belts were discovered, and we discovered for the first time just how much water was in Antarctica’s ice mass.  The scientific, institutional, and political legacies of the IGY endured for decades, many to the present day.
One of the things that I still remember about the IGY is that scientists were really concerned about Earth’s mantle, the molten layer of rock that lies just beneath the crust.  There were efforts made to drill into the mantle to examine Earth’s interior close up.  But the mantle lies several miles beneath the lighter continents that float on top of it and the efforts failed.

There have also been several attempts to drill into the mantle in the sea floor where the overlying crust is much thinner than continental crust.  But ocean drilling has its own problems, the most serious being that you must drill your hole from a boat bobbing on the ocean’s surface.  Ocean drilling is possible, of course.  Some of the gas that’s in your gas tank right now probably came from an offshore rig.  But drilling deep holes, miles deep has doomed these expeditions to failure. That’s why I was really intrigued by a news story about a recent discovery in the Atlantic Ocean.  Apparently geophysicists have recently discovered that all those other scientists were wrong.  You don’t have to drill a deep hole to reach the mantle.  There’s apparently a huge chunk of it lying completely exposed . . . . . on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Earth’s layers.

Geologists have known since the 57-58 IGY that the seemingly immovable land that we live is in constant motion.  The continents perform an incredible slow-motion dance and meet and change partners over millions of years.  There are two major points of seafloor spreading.  One is in the eastern Pacific.  The western edge of that plate dives beneath us and that dive creates the Marianas Trench, Guam’s earthquakes and the volcanoes to the north and east of us.

The other is in the middle of the Atlantic and scientists have always assumed that the widening gap there, created by the continents as they visit somebody else, was filled by volcanic lava.  Apparently that’s not so.  They’ve discovered a huge area covering thousands of square miles in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the Earth's crust seems to be entirely missing.  The mantle is exposed on the seafloor beneath 2 miles of salt water.  The area has been described as being like an open wound on the Earth’s surface.  The mystery is, of course, what happened to the crust.  We don’t know if it was there and was ripped away by huge geological faults, or if, perhaps, it never developed in the first place. Geologists don’t understand what’s gone wrong with their theories, but a major expedition mounted by British scientists at the National Oceanography Center, Southampton, Cardiff University and Durham University aims to find out.  They’ll be using the brand new, hi-tech British research ship the RRS James Cook, which will be on its maiden voyage.

The location of the exposed mantle

Scientists will first tow TOBI along the ocean floor.  TOBI stands for Towed Ocean Bottom Instrument) (ya gotta love these acronyms!) and it will let the scientists onboard identify areas where the mineral peridotite (found in mantle rock) is located.  TOBI will also give them information on the shape of the ridge and identify areas of mantle eruption.

The scientists will use the information gathered from TOBI to position a robotic rock drill to sample the seafloor.  These geologists won’t be drilling from the ship’s deck; they’ll lower the drill to the bottom.  The robot has eyes; a mounted camera and the scientists will be able to see exactly where they’re drilling.  (Let’s hope that they remembered to take lights along as well.  It’s DARK down there!). The robot will take rock cores and by analyzing them in series, the scientists should be able to discover how the seafloor spreading process varies across the region, and why the mantle is exposed in the area.

TOBI

Missing crust?  Perhaps these cutting-edge British researchers will discover that there’s more than one way to make Earth’s pie!  Science is change.  Learn more about your changing world every week in the Deep column.