“What’s your hypothesis?” This is the call made by American scientists from the NOAA Ocean Exploration organization to the public, in an attempt to answer a mystery of nature.
During an excursion in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, these explorers discovered a curious pattern in the sand: dozens of holes follow each other very regularly in the ground, at a depth of 1.6 miles (about 2.5 kilometers), as reported by New York Times.
Same discovery, a few days later, 300 kilometers away. “We just landed on the bottom of the ocean and guess what we found. More holes!” Twitter.
Although it is still impossible for them to explain precisely the origin of these marks, the researchers believe that they could be “traces of life” that could have been made by living organisms. “The holes appear to have been made by humans, but the small piles of sediment surrounding them suggest they were excavated by… something,” they wrote.
An 18 year old mystery.
The question raised by scientists on social networks has attracted the public’s curiosity and has raised many hypotheses, ranging from the intervention of Man to the traces left by submarines, passing through the theory of an extraterrestrial presence.
According to a spokeswoman for the organization, interviewed by the New York Times, this discovery had already been made 18 years ago by researchers. But the time that has elapsed since then has not made it possible to answer these questions.
“Something big is going on there, and we don’t know what it is. It highlights the fact that there are still mysteries [dans les fonds marins]“, summarizes, with our colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic, Dr. Michael Vecchione, NOOA biologist.
Sediment samples collected
When the holes were first detected in 2004, Dr. Michael Vecchione offered two possible explanations. On the one hand, they could be marine organisms moving on top of the sediments and making holes in the bottom. On the other hand, these same organisms could leave marks by moving under the sand, making holes upwards.
In order to shed light on this deep sea mystery, NOOA is currently undertaking a series of expeditions that take it from Puerto Rico to the Azores via Newport. Sediment samples have already been taken from the holes discovered last week for analysis and, perhaps, putting an end to an 18-year mystery.
Source: BFM TV
