Scientists Dig Out Longest-Ever Rock Sample From Deep Within Underwater Mountain

Researchers have managed to drill out the longest-ever piece of rock from Earth's mantle from underwater mountains, in the mid-Atlantic ridge. Scientists penetrated 0.7 miles deep into the seafloor of the area known as Atlantic Massif, to get the rock samples, Live Science reported. The findings have been published in a journal named Science.

The drilling operation was undertaken by the International Ocean Discovery Program in 2023, Live Science reported. The reason the Atlantic Massif was chosen as the drilling site was because the sea floor in this area was pulling apart giving rise to mantle rocks.

The area was near the "Lost City," a hydrothermal vent field crowded with beehive and tower-shaped structures that release methane and hydrogen into the ocean.

Drilling into the mantle is not an easy venture, shared Johan Lissenberg, a geochemist at the University of Cardiff in the U.K., who was involved in the study, Live Science reported. Mantle rocks are fragile by nature and easily fall apart from any tension. Atlantic Massif, however, was easier to dig into for mantle rock than others.

"For some reason, the mantle rocks in our site drilled like a dream," he said. "It was absolutely incredible to see."

The team has managed to pull up 16.4 feet (5 m) of mantle rock samples through drilling, Live Science reported. From the 0.7 miles that they dug, they were able to recover almost 70% of their findings.

"We collected so many more samples than we had been expecting that we had already consumed many of our sample collection supplies by halfway through the expedition," study co-author William Brazelton, a microbiologist at the University of Utah said, Live Science reported. To, achieve their objectives, the team drilled 24 hours a day, for two months. 

"The nearly continuous recovery down to 1.2 km provides an excellent opportunity to document the relationships among microbial diversity, abundance, and activity with depth and temperature, including temperatures approaching the limit for life," Brazelton said, Live Science reported.

Lissenberg hopes that the samples help scientists understand how different bits of mantle melt and then migrate toward the surface, Live Science reported. Till now they have figured out that the melts move in a diagonal, inclined path toward the surface.