16/06/2011

Japanese drilling vessel Chikyu

At a meeting in Amsterdam this week, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme announces its science plan for the next ten years. Chair of the committee that wrote the plan is Professor Mike Bickle of Cambridge University. At the centre of the plan is the Japanese drilling vessel Chikyu (meaning Planet Earth). There are 4 main aspects to the plan ahead. One is to use sediment cores from the ocean floor to explore climate change in the past with the hope of understanding it better in the future. The second is to study the hidden biosphere – vast communities of micro-organisms now known to live within the rocks under the ocean. How do they live and evolve where it’s almost impossible to move around and interact? Thirdly - and particularly urgent in the light of the recent Japanese Tsunami – is the need to drill and instrument the ocean floor faults where submarine earthquakes occur in hope of understanding and warning of future disasters. Finally, there’s deep geology – understanding how new ocean floor forms, how circulating fluids cool the Earth’s mantle and ultimately drilling right through the crust for the first time, into the unexplored mantle.