Serendipity!
Fire + Ice: Exploring for Volcanoes
Beneath the Arctic
The Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition
July 31 - October 3, 2001
When scientists and students head off to sea, they expect some special pleasures. Here at the Gakkel Ridge, we can explore nature’s beauty almost insiders. We get to pursue our own ideas and projects close to our hearts, but also to work as a team. We hope that we shall come a little closer to understanding the Earth and our own future. But the most exciting discoveries cannot even be predicted!
People can easily forget the excitement that science brings. To many — far too many — science itself sounds dry or obscure. And sure, to get their job done, scientists have to know the ropes. They have to know and respect the scientific method simply to have a job. The method involves asking questions, making tests, and using the answers to make and refine new questions.
Scientists start with proposals, which they send for evaluation to funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation. Other scientists, coming from all over the world, read each proposal and evaluate it. Well-prepared proposals generally must have "testable hypotheses — questions that the proposed science will answer. Simple hypotheses with clear tests have a higher chance of getting funded.
But not every answer can be sought in advance, because the most interesting questions look at things that we neither know nor expect. In fact, revealing the unknown and unexpected makes a good definition of discovery.
Take radioactivity, which involves the changing of one element into another. Impossible, everyone felt — mere alchemy! No one could have written the proposal to discover it. The most exciting discoveries at sea came much the same way. The mid-ocean ridge system, transform faults, hydrothermal vents where new life forms flourish in the absence of sun-light — none of these discoveries came out of testing hypotheses, because we did not know they were there! The discovery came from looking at things that no one had seen before.
Often, the most important science takes serendipity — when accidental, unpredicted, exciting things happen. And when there is serendipitous discovery, science is the most fun!
Some discoveries take place right under one’s nose. Take Newton and his famous apple, for example. But greater opportunity for discovery may come somewhere no has looked before. The Gakkel Ridge is a place like that. No one could investigate the Gakkel Ridge before. It has taken two world-class scientific icebreakers working together, and not enough was known to formulate hypotheses.
For the Gakkel Ridge, scientists outfitted a navy submarine, the Hawkbill, with a sonar system to help make a map. Others, including Jim Cochran and Bernie Coakely at Columbia as well as Margo Edwards and Greg Kurras from the University of Hawaii, spent months under the ice, mapping the ridge. The map allowed us to formulate hypotheses that then survived well-thought-out scientific review.
"We need to go there because no one has been there before, and it is probably interesting." That alone never makes for good science, and no wonder it never makes it past other scientists. "We expect to find so-and-so." That will probably not get a serious mission going either. Reviewers can say, quite correctly, that we might not!
But, truly, if all we do during this mission is test good hypotheses, then we shall come home disappointed. No one has sampled along this ridge before! No pictures have been taken of the bottom! No hydothermal vents there have yet been found!
What lies down there? What shall we find? We are sure to be surprised by a lot of things — and nothing could be better!
Further Resources
Dive & Discover: A fun and informative expedition
The Revel Project: Volcanoes, exploration, and life
Scripps: An volcano expedition to Costa Rica
TEA: Teachers Experiencing the Arctic and Antarctic
|
The Expedition: |
Q&A: |
Current Events: |