When most of us look out at the ocean, we see a mostly flat blue surface stretching to the horizon. It's easy to imagine the sea beneath as calm and largely static—a massive, still abyss far removed ...

When we dream of landscapes, we might imagine rolling valleys or rugged mountains. But there is a whole landscape hidden from human view: the secret world of the seafloor. Half of Earth's oceans are ...

A few strange pits and trails preserved in ancient Italian rocks have changed what scientists thought they knew about the ...

Underwater terrain of the Lost City Hydrothermal Fields. (Lost City Research/University of Washington) Close to the summit of an underwater mountain west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a jagged landscape ...

The strange, shiny discovery, retrieved from the ocean near Alaska in 2023, turned out to be part of an anemone, scientists said. By John Yoon Explorers sent a robot two miles under the ocean’s ...

Scientists have discovered that deep-sea mining plumes can strip vital nutrition from the ocean’s twilight zone, replacing natural food with nutrient-poor sediment. The resulting “junk food” effect ...

I spent years preparing to dive into the deepest place on earth. Only a handful of people have traveled into the depths of the Mariana Trench, nearly 7 miles below the ocean surface. As a geologist ...

You may be hearing a lot lately about critical minerals and rare earth elements. These natural materials are essential to industry and modern technology – everything from cellphones to fighter jets.

When we dream of landscapes, we might imagine rolling valleys or rugged mountains. But there is a whole landscape hidden from human view: the secret world of the seafloor. Half of Earth’s oceans are ...