iPedia Free Information Center

Information about Black Smokers

Enlarge picture
A black smoker in the Atlantic Ocean


Black smokers are a type of hydrothermal vent found on the ocean floor. The vents are formed in fields hundreds of meters wide when superheated water from below the Earth's crust comes through the ocean floor. It can also be known as a Sea Vent. The superheated water is rich in dissolved minerals from the crust, most notably sulfides, which crystallize to create a chimney-like structure around each vent. When the superheated water in the vent comes in contact with the cold ocean water, many minerals are precipitated, creating the distinctive black color. The metal sulfides that are deposited can become massive sulfide ore deposits in time.

Black smokers were first discovered in 1977 around the Galápagos Islands by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They were observed using a small submersible vehicle called Alvin. Today, black smokers are known to exist in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, at an average depth of 2100 meters. The temperature of the water at the vent can reach 400 Â°C, but does not usually boil at the seafloor due to the high pressure it is under at that depth. The water is also extremely acidic, often having a pH value as low as 2.8 — approximately that of vinegar. Each year 1.4 × 1014 kg of water is passed through black smokers.

Black smoker ecosystem

Enlarge picture
Deep sea vent biogeochemical cycle diagram


Although life is very sparse at these depths, black smokers are the center of entire ecosystems. Sunlight is nonexistent, so many organisms — such as archaea and extremophiles — must convert the heat, methane, and sulfur compounds provided by black smokers into energy through a process called chemosynthesis. In turn, more complex life forms like clams and tubeworms feed on these organisms. The organisms at the base of the food chain also deposit minerals into the base of the black smoker, thus completing the life cycle.

A species of phototrophic bacterium has been found living near a black smoker off the coast of Mexico at a depth of 2500 m. No sunlight penetrates that far into the waters. Instead, the bacteria, part of the Chlorobiaceae family, use the faint glow from the black smoker for photosynthesis. This is the first organism discovered in nature to use a light other than sunlight for the photosynthetic process (Beatty, et al., 2005).

New and unusual species are constantly being discovered in the neighborhood of black smokers: for instance, the Pompeii worm in the 1980s, and, in 2001, during an expedition to Indian Ocean's Kairei hydrothermal vent field, an armor-plated gastropod. The latter uses iron sulfides (pyrite and greigite) for the structure of its dermal sclerites (hardened body parts), instead of calcium carbonate. The extreme pressure of 2500 m of water (approximately 25 megapascals or 246.73 atmosphere) is thought to play a role in stabilizing iron sulfide for biological purposes. This armor plating probably serves as a defense against the venomous radula (teeth) of predatory snails, co-existing in the same community. This snail, which is unique in its kind, has not yet been named to date.

See also

External links

References

  • Van Dover CL, Humphris SE, Fornari D, Cavanaugh CM, Collier R, Goffredi SK, Hashimoto J, Lilley MD, Reysenbach AL, Shank TM, Von Damm KL, Banta A, Gallant RM, Gotz D, Green D, Hall J, Harmer TL, Hurtado LA, Johnson P, McKiness ZP, Meredith C, Olson E, Pan IL, Turnipseed M, Won Y, Young CR 3rd, Vrijenhoek RC (2001). "Biogeography and ecological setting of Indian Ocean hydrothermal vents". Science 294 (5543): 818-23.  PMID 11557843
  • Van Dover, Cindy Lee (2000). The Ecology of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04929-7. 
  • Beatty JT, Overmann J, Lince MT, Manske AK, Lang AS, Blankenship RE, Van Dover CL, Martinson TA, Plumley FG. (2005). "An obligately photosynthetic bacterial anaerobe from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (26): 9306-10.  PMID 15967984
A hydrothermal vent, also called a "black smoker", is a fissure in a planet's surface from which geothermally heated water issues. Hydrothermal vents are commonly found near volcanically active places, tectonic plates that are moving apart, ocean basins, and hotspots.
..... Click the link for more information.
The seabed (also sea floor , seafloor, or ocean floor) is the bottom of the ocean. At the bottom of the continental slope is the continental rise, which is caused by sediment cascading down the continental slope.
..... Click the link for more information.
superheating (sometimes referred to as boiling retardation, or boiling delay) is the phenomenon in which a liquid is heated to a temperature higher than its standard boiling point, without actually boiling.
..... Click the link for more information.
EARTH was a short-lived Japanese vocal trio which released 6 singles and 1 album between 2000 and 2001. Their greatest hit, their debut single "time after time", peaked at #13 in the Oricon singles chart.
..... Click the link for more information.
crust is the outermost layer of a planet.

The crust of the Earth is composed of a great variety of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. The crust is underlain by the mantle.
..... Click the link for more information.
A mineral is a naturally occurring substance formed through geological processes that has a characteristic chemical composition, a highly ordered atomic structure and specific physical properties.
..... Click the link for more information.
The term sulfide (also spelled sulphide, see spelling) refers to several types of chemical compounds containing sulfur in its lowest oxidation number of −2.

Formally, "sulfide" is the dianion, S2−
..... Click the link for more information.
Volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposits or VMS are a type of metal sulfide ore deposit, mainly Cu-Zn which are associated with and created by volcanic-associated hydrothermal events in submarine environments.
..... Click the link for more information.
State Party  Ecuador
Type Natural
Criteria vii, viii, ix, x
Reference 1
Region Latin America and the Caribbean

Inscription History
Inscription 1978  (2nd Session)

..... Click the link for more information.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a scientific agency of the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere.
..... Click the link for more information.
Alvin (DSV-2) is a 16-ton, manned deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
..... Click the link for more information.
Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres (41.1 million square miles), it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface.
..... Click the link for more information.
Earth's oceans
(World Ocean)
  • Arctic Ocean
  • Atlantic Ocean
  • Indian Ocean
  • Pacific Ocean
  • Southern Ocean


The Pacific Ocean (from the Latin name Mare Pacificum
..... Click the link for more information.
1 metre =
SI units
1000 mm 0 cm
US customary / Imperial units
0 ft 0 in
The metre or meter[1](symbol: m) is the fundamental unit of length in the International System of Units (SI).
..... Click the link for more information.
Celsius is, or relates to, the Celsius temperature scale (previously known as the centigrade scale). The degree Celsius (symbol: °C) can refer to a specific temperature on the Celsius scale
..... Click the link for more information.
ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) is a set of properties that guarantee that database transactions are processed reliably. In the context of databases, a single logical operation on the data is called a transaction.
..... Click the link for more information.
    pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution. Aqueous solutions at 25 ℃ with a pH less than seven are considered acidic, while those with a pH greater than seven are considered basic (alkaline). The pH of 7.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Vinegar is a liquid produced from the fermentation of ethanol in a process that yields its key ingredient, acetic acid. The acetic acid concentration ranges typically from 4 to 8 percent by volume for table vinegar[1]
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms in an area functioning together with all the non-living physical factors of the environment.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Archaea
    Woese, Kandler & Wheelis, 1990

    Phyla

    Crenarchaeota
    Euryarchaeota
    Korarchaeota
    Nanoarchaeota
    ARMAN
    The Archaea (
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    An extremophile is an organism that thrives in and may even require physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to the majority of life on Earth.

    Most extremophiles are microbes.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Methane is a chemical compound with the molecular formula CH4. It is the simplest alkane, and the principal component of natural gas. Methane's bond angles are 109.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    6
    (strongly acidic oxide)
    Electronegativity 2.58 (Pauling scale)
    Ionization energies
    (more) 1st: 999.6 kJmol−1
    2nd: 2252 kJmol−1
    3rd: 3357 kJmol−1

    Atomic radius 100 pm
    Atomic radius (calc.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Chemosynthesis is the biological conversion of 1-carbon molecules (usually carbon dioxide or methane) and nutrients into organic matter using the oxidation of inorganic molecules (e.g.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    clam is a kind of mollusc that has a shell divided into two pieces called valves, in other words, a clam is a bivalve mollusc.

    The word "clam" has no real taxonomic significance in biology. However in the USA the word can sometimes be used to mean any bivalve mollusc.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    R. pachyptila

    Binomial name
    Riftia pachyptila
    M. L. Jones, 1981

    Giant tube worms are marine invertebrates in the phylum Vestimentifera (formerly grouped in phylum Pogonophora) related to
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Food chains, food webs and/or food networks describe the feeding relationships between species in an ecological community. They graphically represent the transfer of material and energy from one species to another within an ecosystem.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    A life cycle is a period involving one generation of an organism through means of reproduction, whether through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction. In regard to its ploidy, there are three types of cycles:
    • haplontic life cycle
    • diplontic

    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Anthem
    Himno Nacional Mexicano


    Capital
    (and largest city) Mexico City

    Official languages Spanish (
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Chlorobi

    Class: Chlorobia

    Order: Chlorobiales

    Family: Chlorobiaceae

    Genera
    Chlorobium
    Ancalochloris

    ..... Click the link for more information.


    This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
    Herod_Archelaus


    page counter