Generally humans as a culture are obsessed about space exploration and aliens. This assumption is based on the fact that we have countless television / movie programs developed around the concept of alien life on other planets, however the one place that we have never considered looking for new life is right here in our very own oceans.
The oceanographer David Gallo has spent numerous years diving into the very depths of our planet's oceans in a submarine with special video equipment in order to film never-before scene organisms. Gallo takes his footage and turns it over to biologists for further study. Is is Gallo's belief that we as humans believe that we know everything about the oceans due to popular videos and moves about the upper layer of the ocean (the part that receives light) when in reality there is also a deeper darker part of the ocean which never receives sunlight and we are only just starting to explore it. This "dark abyss" is home to mountain ranges that are equal to, or greater than, the mountains on the surface of the planet. Around these mountains resides a jellyfish that grows up to 150 ft and is the longest known organism in the ocean. Every time Gallo does a dive he finds and records up to 198 new, never-before seen species. This area of the ocean is also home to volcanoes that release tiny bacteria from inside the planet when they erupt. Gallo speculates that these bacteria are the simplest form of life and that the human species may have evolved from these tiny organisms.
Personally I will walk away from this TED Talk with a new mindset concerning that whenever we as a people think that there is nothing more to learn about a particular subject, there will always be something new awaiting to be discovered upon a deeper look.
Friday, August 30, 2013
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