Wired Science

What Lurks Beneath the Arctic Ice in an Unexplored Mid-Ocean Ridge?

Three miles beneath the Arctic ice cap, just shy of the North Pole, lies an ancient underwater midocean ridge known as the Gakkel. It was one of the last areas on Earth yet to be explored, but intrepid geologist Rob Reves-Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution decided eight years ago that he wanted to change that. At the Gakkel, Earth's crust is spreading slowly apart, uncovering new volcanoes and deep hot springs rife with never-before-seen extreme microbes. Reves-Sohn knew the region would teach him and other scientists new lessons about how Earth's plates move and what lies beneath them—so he had to go there, and soon.

Drilling under all that shifting ice is dangerous, so Reves-Sohn and his colleagues first had to come up with a clever way to probe the icy depths without risking their own lives. They decided on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, free-swimming robots that could dive as far as two miles. While many other scientists scoffed at their idea, saying it would never work, major funding institutions believed in them: The team received money from not only the National Science Foundation but also NASA, which hoped their findings would have relevance to the hunt for life on Jupiter's moon Europa.

Years later, with their underwater robots and other special instruments in tow, Reves-Sohn and his team took off for the Gakkel Ridge to hunt for deep springs and signs of microbial life deep down below the ice. If they found those signs, their plan was to deploy the underwater robots to swim down and bring back samples — assuming, of course, that the robots didn't get stuck. The mission was bound to be risky but also superbly exciting.

Which meant, of course, that WIRED SCIENCE had to come along. Did Reves-Sohn succeed? If so, what did his team find? It's all here on WIRED SCIENCE, and it's only a click away.