cientists have made a groundbreaking discovery at an underwater mountain in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. They managed to drill almost a mile beneath the ocean floor and retrieve pieces of Earth's rocky mantle, which has been a dream of geoscientists for decades. The mantle is responsible for fueling plate tectonics in the crust, which creates mountains, volcanoes, and earthquakes. The new expedition was carried out by an ocean drilling vessel called the JOIDES Resolution, which went to a special "tectonic window" in the North Atlantic. Here, the rocks of the mantle have been pushed close to the surface as the ocean floor slowly pulls apart at the nearby Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The team began drilling on May 1, and they expected to make a shallow "pinprick" because the record for drilling in mantle rock was only a tenth of a mile.
However, they managed to retrieve many tubes of dark rock, which were surprisingly complete. When the team stopped drilling on June 2, they had taken rock samples from as deep as 4,157 feet below the seafloor. This discovery could help scientists understand how chemical reactions between mantle rocks and water could have given rise to life on our planet.
