British scientists have embarked on a mission to study a gigantic hole in the Atlantic seabed… The 12-person team left the Canary Islands Monday with a new high-tech vessel and a robotic device named Toby that will dig up rock samples at the bottom of the crater and film what it sees.

The mysterious orifice is in an undersea mountain range, the kind of structure believed to form when Atlantic tectonic plates separate and volcanic lava surges upward to fill the gap in the earth’s crust. But that did not happen this time. Instead, the hole exposes the mantle, the material that makes up Earth’s interior, said British geophysicist Roger Searle of Durham University, one of the lead researchers.

The robotic device will land on the bottom of the crater, measure its depth and dig into the mantle to bring back samples.

What a species we are. Don’t we always pick at scabs?



  1. undissembled says:

    What a species we are

    What about the species they will find down there?

  2. TJGeezer says:

    Speaking of picking at scabs, didn’t an oil exploration company let loose a volcano somewhere in, um, Indonesia or maybe Malaysia, that has left thousands of people without homes? Hope these scientists are careful when they push their icepicks into this pressurized vessel we live on.

  3. Wait a minute! The Atlantic Ocean has a two-mile diameter hole through the Earth’s mantle into the Earth’s interior? How is that not heating up the Atlantic Ocean like crazy?

  4. joshua says:

    I’am hoping for something on the lines of The Creature from 20,000 Fathoms……now THAT would be cool!!

  5. AdmFubar says:

    bet this turns out to be earth’s anus.


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