With the help of international crews and scientists and post-war naval technologies, we are finally able to discover what lies beneath the great oceans. In 1977, under the leadership of Bob Ballard, a sailing group from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and Oregon State researchers gathered aboard the Knorr. Above the Galapagos Rift, with Alvin, the world's first manned deep-sea submersible, they planned to find such ventilation systems. At latitude 21 degrees North, the Alvin reached 9,200 feet (2.8 km) at the bottom, where a computer indicated a curious temperature of 7.6 degrees Celsius (Cone, 83). It is now well known, in the scientific community, that the movement of the Earth's crust has been active for billions of years. However, the driving mechanism of tectonic forces still remains a mystery. The asthenosphere on which the lithosphere floats is molten because of radioactive decay which heats us from the inside out. Volcanism is one of the results of shifting plate margins. Specifically, where the plates move apart are volcanoes and, subsequently, some of the largest mountain ranges on the planet. Hydrothermal vents are also found in these locations. What was not understood until this dive was a hydrothermal cycle that created huge vents from dissolved minerals and metals. There is absolutely no light for photosynthesis, the intense pressure from the miles of seawater above and the resulting freezing temperatures would seem to inhibit life. However, it is only around these vent fields that an astonishing amount of diverse biomass can be observed. At the base of a lava lake hovering above cool pahoehoe with pillowed basalt edges, the Alvin had just entered the deep-water hydrothermal basin. fie...... middle of paper ......ks CitedCone, Joseph. Fire Under the Sea. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991. Macinnis, Joseph. Aliens from the deep. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2004. Van Dover, Cindy Lee. The Ecology of Deep-Ocean Hydrothermal Vents. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000Marine Physical and Environmental Laboratory (PMEL). VENTS Program: Exploring Deep Ocean Ecosystems". National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association. June 18, 2010. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/. Fornari, Dan. “Dive and Discover; Expeditions to the Deep Sea National Science Foundation. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, June 18, 2010. http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. .gov/explorations/explorations.html