(soft music)

[Narrator] Alvin has some capabilities that

it didn't have before.

The new design was based

on the premise that ultimately we would

like the vehicle to go to 6500 meters, which

would allow us to reach about 98% of

sea floor, rather than the 62 or 63 percent.

The sub has a bunch of sensors, that makes it

aware of where it is in space.

[Narrator] And we've added an additional

thruster.

[Narrator] It makes a big difference to the kind

of area you can cover.

Actually, a lot of the

technological advances we've made have been

supported by space programs,

or interest in the origins and evolution

of life on our planet, in thinking about life

beyond Earth, you know? Not just on our

own planet, but what could life have looked

like in the beginning of Mars's history or

beneath the Europa ocean or something

like that.

Hydrothermal entities are otherworldly.

(mysterious music)

Alvin does a lot of work in the Pacific

Northwest, because of the type of hydrothermal

events that are there.

So you have these tall structures that

are taller than like the cathedral

of Notre Dame in Paris, and I have had

the privilege of diving on those,

and it's amazing to basically fly the sub

up the face of one of these structures,

and see all the different microbes and animals

alike that live off of them.

It's kind of tough living at the sea

floor, except where you have these areas where

there's this new production of carbon.

The magma in the crust is heating water.

That water is reacting with the rocks and

becoming kind of nutrient rich and animal

communities and organisms are using the

energy in that water.

Instead of getting energy from the sun, you

get microbes that are harnessing energy from

underwater volcanoes, building an ecosystem.

Kind of from the bottom up, as opposed to the

top down. We've seen footage of when Mount

St. Helens erupted, for example, and a huge

plume of ash had spread around our planet,

you know. So you could think about these big

plumes coming out of these hydrothermal

vents. There have been a couple studies that

traced this hydrothermal plume, thousands of

miles.

[Narrator] Alvin gives us the opportunity to go down and

really look at what's out on the sea floor.

So without Alvin, who knows how long it would

have taken us to discover hydrothermal systems,

but it's a relatively young field.

Mainly what the scientists really want to do

is collect samples and they want a sample from

that spot.

The vehicle is really a sampling machine,

so it might be measuring the chemicals,

the particles that are in the water, shooting

light out an measuring the back scatter.

How much comes back. Alvin was set up

so that a scientist can dream up

whatever they want to put on the vehicle.

I would describe what we're doing

as basically searches. Learning things about

our planet and our environment that we didn't

know before. At that interface between the

Earth's interior and the hydrosphere, that

chemical exchange has an impact on global

climate systems. Some of those correlate

very well with when we've had periods of

mass extinction. Researching the oceans is

directly relevant to peoples lives.

The R and D that we do is hugely

important to prepare ourselves for the future.