By: Kyle Xu

Imagine a place deep in the ocean covered by multiple columns of rare rock, spanned by craggy spires, emitting an eerie glow. It’s almost as if this area contained the roots of civilization on our very Earth.

Recently, a 30-person team searching the Mid-Atlantic ridges found almost an entire mile of precious rocks, all formulated into huge, rocky spires. Scientists believe that it is possible for the rocks from this area to reveal secrets about the origin of life, as the site was close to a hot spring, which scientists believe have the possibility of having created geochemical reactions that explained the start of terrestrial life.

Frieder Klein, a member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, says that “we now have a treasure trove of rocks that will let us systematically study the processes that people believe are relevant to the emergence of life on the planet.”

“Lost City”, the discovered site, is 1400 miles east of Bermuda, has spires of great height, some almost as tall as a 20-story building. Dr. Johan Lissenberg, said that the sections of rock “fracture quite easily,” allowing it to be easier to drill through the layers. Lissenberg said that their excitement rivaled that of “kids in a candy store.”

The excitement comes from the accessibility to the core, the inner layer of Earth that is beneath the crust that we live on and the mantle. So far, scientists have been able to retrieve almost an entire mile of core samples.

Dr. Klein expressed that the area could likely not only explain Earth, but also life in the solar system. “This is a basic resource for the future,” he said.