Even in this hostile environment life forms have been discovered, including bacteria that use seemingly poisonous hydrogen sulfide from the vent water to make food for their hosts.
After a few more topics — bioluminescence, hydrothermal vents, water pollution, man's need to shape up environmentally, and a device for collecting gelatinous sea life, which Gallo referred to as a "slurp gun" — audience members lined up at microphones to ask questions.
In this paper the natural ventilation conditions of a room with an atmospheric-vent water heater are investigated.
They put the vent water into culture tubes along with iron oxide and found a bug that was reducing the iron oxide and multiplying at 100°C.
The readings suggest the worm tubes contain mostly seawater, but the gel contains vent water that seeps from tiny cracks in the smoker wall, says Le Bris.
Various minerals precipitate as the heated vent water enters the surrounding ocean water, leading to the formation of baroque rock formations.
The grid used was as regular as possible, considering the presence of steam vents, water streams, irregular topography, and some man-made structures in the study sites.
This latter case corresponds to the operation mode of the atmospheric-vent water heater, which is one of the most frequently encountered appliances to heat domestic water.
The vent water temperatures at these sites ranged from 10° to 65°C, and there were two main T-RF clusters, Loihi Group I that was associated with cooler vents <40°C and Loihi Group 2 that was associated with vents >40°C.
