March 3, 2010
Ocean Exploration from the Shore to the Solar System
Peter Rona
Professor, Marine Geology and Geophysics, Rutgers
Minutes of the 22nd Meeting of the 68th Year
President George Hansen called the meeting to order at 10:15; Don Edwards led the Invocation; Harvey Rothberg read the Minutes of the February 24th meeting on Laura Khan's talk, “Leadership during Epidemics.” Bill Stephenson introduced a guest, Guy Woelk, and Jim Harford introduced a visitor Tim Chaston. An announcement was made about sending to Old Guard members an e-mail with an attached Spring 2010 Speaker Program, and noted that if the attachment could not be downloaded a posted copy would be sent.
Number in attendance, 85
Jonas Bingham introduced the speaker, Prof. Peter Rona of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences of Rutgers University- a talk which was delayed to about 10:50 by challenges to coupling the speaker's PowerPoint presentation to the Friend Center Projector which were fortunately solved by Jerry Berkelhammer's Arrangements Group and the Princeton Media Services.
Dr. Rona is a geological oceanographer credited with many discoveries including the first hydro-thermal field in the Atlantic Ocean. His research focus is the investigation of ocean ridges and continental margins using geophysical and geological methods. He has published over 250 scientific papers, and serves as a consultant to the United Nations on seafloor resources and the marine environment. As he noted before starting the talk, he was fortunate in having developed, over his long research career in Deep Submersible Vehicles, patience in responding to "unexpected experimental challenges"-whether 2.5 miles below the surface of the sea, or 10 feet above Olden Street!
Prof. Rona's talk invited the Old Guard audience to change their view of the earth's oceans from being only an area considerably larger than the land area of the earth, but with a bottom that is only a muddy desert devoid of any significant role in the life of our world except for ships and fish. His beautiful PowerPoint presentation started with an image of our Jersey shore and then moved 100 miles off shore and down 2 to 3 miles below the surface to display the remarkable Hudson Canyon with walls almost as high as the Grand Canyon but imbedded in chemically active water, not chemically active air!
Prof. Rona then introduced us to the presence on the deep sea floor of methane gas, CH4, which is emitted from the earth and which is locked in a permafrost lattice of ice on the sea floor of the global oceans, and which accounts for 1/2 of all the organic carbon on earth. Needless to say, Oil/Gas Companies are interested in using this resource to meet future energy needs, but have yet to discover a way to economically recover methane spread so widely over the world ocean floor. Prof. Rona noted that methane in the perma-frost also represents a potential contributor to climate change since methane is 30 times more effective in atmospheric global warming than carbon dioxide. Indeed, two days after Prof.Rona's talk, a March 5th article in Science magazine, "Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf" [N. Shakula et al, Science 327, 1246 (2010)], was highlighted in the March 5th issue of the NY Times!
Prof Rona then led the Old Guard audience to the Volcanic Mountain Ranges along the Mid Atlantic Ridge and the East Pacific Rise, whose eruptions can produce sliding rocks, a new sea floor, "black smokers," as well as tsunamis waves on the ocean surface. He noted that the ocean should be considered as a leaky container where water can interact with methane, hot magma, hot rocks containing tiny metallic particles, that can combine to produce ocean geysers on the surface as "black smokers." More significantly for those who are there, the ocean/earth contact can produce, at the bottom, local ocean regions with temperatures as hot as 400C! Indeed, random entry into such zones would have weakened/destroyed the transparent acrylic windows of the three person Deep Submersible Vehicle, Alvin, which was Ronan's major research vessel for many years. Due to the skill and experience that Prof. Rona and his colleagues developed over the last 30 years they were always able to safely observe, and define, the sea bottom biosphere and its coupling to hot methane flow from the earth, despite the continuous darkness of the research environment in the Volcanic Mountain Ranges.
Early research in the early 70's in the Mid Atlantic Ridge was limited by lighting and camera resolution to areas the size of a table cloth, but was sufficient to lead to a major scientific discovery of an organism a bit larger than a poker chip that consisted of an overall hexagonal outline of a network of hexagonal cells. The living organisms were found in the lower east wall of the Mid-Atlantic Range at a depth of 2.1 miles below the surface about half way between Princeton and Spain. In 1978 the unique form of the living creature, was found to be identical with 50 million year old fossils of Paleodictyon nodosum, found on rock slabs raised on the Atlantic seashore of Spain by the eminent German paleontologist, Adolph Sielacher. Later research by Rona and colleagues employed high resolution cameras, and high intensity lights, supplied by Stephen Low of IMAX, which made it possible to make high definition photographs of areas that are the size of football fields. This technology resulted in a major 2009 publication in the journal Deep-Sea Research II entitled "Paleodictyon nodosum: A living fossil on the deep-sea floor" [Rona, Sielacher et al, 56(2009) 1700-1712] entitled "Paleodictyon nodosum: A living fossil on the deep-sea floor"] which was highlighted in an article by William Broad in the August 25, 2009 issue of the New York Times with the headline, "Diving Deep for a Living Fossil." It also resulted in the marvelous 45 minute 2004 IMAX documentary DVD "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" which is listed as a "Production of THE STEPHEN LOW COMPANY and RUTGERS UNIVERSITY" and which is available at the Princeton Library!
The research of Prof. Rona and colleagues expand the view that the surface of the earth has one branch of the tree of life based on hydrocarbons derived from the photosynthesis of carbon dioxide and water, to include a new branch of the tree of life with hydrocarbons derived from the chemosynthesis of hot rocks, water, and methane. The PowerPoint presentation derived from their research included marvelous deep sea pictures of 6 ft tube worms which can replace themselves in 2 years after a catastrophic "barbecue" produced by lava flow, 11 inch red-blooded clams that can survive hydrogen sulfide but should not be eaten by humans because of residual hydrogen sulfide, and large shrimps with an infrared sensitive eye that in the absence of visible light can still be used to find warm, but not disastrously hot, regions rich in hydrocarbons in the deep ocean.
In the last section of his talk, Prof. Rona highlighted the search for chemosynthetic life in the planets, and their moons, particularly those of Jupiter, in our solar system through a search for water, heat and methane though planetary space probes, and suggested that if they are found in our solar system the data could set the scale for an "origin of life" survey throughout our galaxy.
Prof. Rona's talk ended at about 11:40 with enthusiastic applause from the full audience, but with no questions from the floor due to the time spent in connecting the speaker's PowerPoint presentation with the projector of the Friend Center.
Respectfully submitted,
George D. Cody
Number in attendance, 85
Jonas Bingham introduced the speaker, Prof. Peter Rona of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences of Rutgers University- a talk which was delayed to about 10:50 by challenges to coupling the speaker's PowerPoint presentation to the Friend Center Projector which were fortunately solved by Jerry Berkelhammer's Arrangements Group and the Princeton Media Services.
Dr. Rona is a geological oceanographer credited with many discoveries including the first hydro-thermal field in the Atlantic Ocean. His research focus is the investigation of ocean ridges and continental margins using geophysical and geological methods. He has published over 250 scientific papers, and serves as a consultant to the United Nations on seafloor resources and the marine environment. As he noted before starting the talk, he was fortunate in having developed, over his long research career in Deep Submersible Vehicles, patience in responding to "unexpected experimental challenges"-whether 2.5 miles below the surface of the sea, or 10 feet above Olden Street!
Prof. Rona's talk invited the Old Guard audience to change their view of the earth's oceans from being only an area considerably larger than the land area of the earth, but with a bottom that is only a muddy desert devoid of any significant role in the life of our world except for ships and fish. His beautiful PowerPoint presentation started with an image of our Jersey shore and then moved 100 miles off shore and down 2 to 3 miles below the surface to display the remarkable Hudson Canyon with walls almost as high as the Grand Canyon but imbedded in chemically active water, not chemically active air!
Prof. Rona then introduced us to the presence on the deep sea floor of methane gas, CH4, which is emitted from the earth and which is locked in a permafrost lattice of ice on the sea floor of the global oceans, and which accounts for 1/2 of all the organic carbon on earth. Needless to say, Oil/Gas Companies are interested in using this resource to meet future energy needs, but have yet to discover a way to economically recover methane spread so widely over the world ocean floor. Prof. Rona noted that methane in the perma-frost also represents a potential contributor to climate change since methane is 30 times more effective in atmospheric global warming than carbon dioxide. Indeed, two days after Prof.Rona's talk, a March 5th article in Science magazine, "Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf" [N. Shakula et al, Science 327, 1246 (2010)], was highlighted in the March 5th issue of the NY Times!
Prof Rona then led the Old Guard audience to the Volcanic Mountain Ranges along the Mid Atlantic Ridge and the East Pacific Rise, whose eruptions can produce sliding rocks, a new sea floor, "black smokers," as well as tsunamis waves on the ocean surface. He noted that the ocean should be considered as a leaky container where water can interact with methane, hot magma, hot rocks containing tiny metallic particles, that can combine to produce ocean geysers on the surface as "black smokers." More significantly for those who are there, the ocean/earth contact can produce, at the bottom, local ocean regions with temperatures as hot as 400C! Indeed, random entry into such zones would have weakened/destroyed the transparent acrylic windows of the three person Deep Submersible Vehicle, Alvin, which was Ronan's major research vessel for many years. Due to the skill and experience that Prof. Rona and his colleagues developed over the last 30 years they were always able to safely observe, and define, the sea bottom biosphere and its coupling to hot methane flow from the earth, despite the continuous darkness of the research environment in the Volcanic Mountain Ranges.
Early research in the early 70's in the Mid Atlantic Ridge was limited by lighting and camera resolution to areas the size of a table cloth, but was sufficient to lead to a major scientific discovery of an organism a bit larger than a poker chip that consisted of an overall hexagonal outline of a network of hexagonal cells. The living organisms were found in the lower east wall of the Mid-Atlantic Range at a depth of 2.1 miles below the surface about half way between Princeton and Spain. In 1978 the unique form of the living creature, was found to be identical with 50 million year old fossils of Paleodictyon nodosum, found on rock slabs raised on the Atlantic seashore of Spain by the eminent German paleontologist, Adolph Sielacher. Later research by Rona and colleagues employed high resolution cameras, and high intensity lights, supplied by Stephen Low of IMAX, which made it possible to make high definition photographs of areas that are the size of football fields. This technology resulted in a major 2009 publication in the journal Deep-Sea Research II entitled "Paleodictyon nodosum: A living fossil on the deep-sea floor" [Rona, Sielacher et al, 56(2009) 1700-1712] entitled "Paleodictyon nodosum: A living fossil on the deep-sea floor"] which was highlighted in an article by William Broad in the August 25, 2009 issue of the New York Times with the headline, "Diving Deep for a Living Fossil." It also resulted in the marvelous 45 minute 2004 IMAX documentary DVD "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" which is listed as a "Production of THE STEPHEN LOW COMPANY and RUTGERS UNIVERSITY" and which is available at the Princeton Library!
The research of Prof. Rona and colleagues expand the view that the surface of the earth has one branch of the tree of life based on hydrocarbons derived from the photosynthesis of carbon dioxide and water, to include a new branch of the tree of life with hydrocarbons derived from the chemosynthesis of hot rocks, water, and methane. The PowerPoint presentation derived from their research included marvelous deep sea pictures of 6 ft tube worms which can replace themselves in 2 years after a catastrophic "barbecue" produced by lava flow, 11 inch red-blooded clams that can survive hydrogen sulfide but should not be eaten by humans because of residual hydrogen sulfide, and large shrimps with an infrared sensitive eye that in the absence of visible light can still be used to find warm, but not disastrously hot, regions rich in hydrocarbons in the deep ocean.
In the last section of his talk, Prof. Rona highlighted the search for chemosynthetic life in the planets, and their moons, particularly those of Jupiter, in our solar system through a search for water, heat and methane though planetary space probes, and suggested that if they are found in our solar system the data could set the scale for an "origin of life" survey throughout our galaxy.
Prof. Rona's talk ended at about 11:40 with enthusiastic applause from the full audience, but with no questions from the floor due to the time spent in connecting the speaker's PowerPoint presentation with the projector of the Friend Center.
Respectfully submitted,
George D. Cody