Earthsky Interviews
Private: Mysterious depths: Earth’s deepest sinkhole
08-01-2007 - Earth
It’s the deepest water-filled sinkhole in the world: El Zacaton in Mexico. This year’s exploration of this Mexican sinkhole might be another step toward finding life on other worlds. El Zacaton is thought to have formed when a volcano collapsed into itself. Springs now feed a lake that fills the sinkhole, which has been measured at over 300 meters, or over 1,000 feet – deep. Marcus Gary is a Ph.D. candidate in the geosciences at the University of Texas. He organized the 2007 expedition.
Marcus Gary: _I could spend the rest of my life going there and everytime I go there I see something completely new and unexpected. And that’s what’s so, so wonderful about it._
In 2007, Gary brought along an “autonomous underwater robot vehicle,” called “DEPTHX”:http://www.stoneaerospace.com/products-pages/products-DEPTHX.php. It goes where human divers can’t go. During the 2007 expedition to El Zacaton, this robot underwater craft mapped the bottom of the sinkhole. It took chemical measurements and sought out forms of life in this extreme environment.
This work might eventually help in exploring life beyond Earth – in, for example, possible liquid oceans beneath an icy crust on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Our thanks today to “NASA”:http://www.nasa.gov: explore, discover, understand.
A retooled version of DEPTHX will head to Antarctica’s Lake Bonney in 2008. Scientists believe that conditions in this frozen Antarctic Lake – vast thermal waterways below frozen ice — more closely resemble those of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
“Marcus Gary’s El Zacaton website”:http://www.geo.utexas.edu/zacaton
“An account of the El Zacaton expedition”:http://geology.com/zacaton/ by Marc Airhart
“Mexican Sinkhole May Lead NASA to Jupiter”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/13/AR2007051300989.html from the Washington Post
“A Tool for Finding Life in Outer Space”:http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18581/ from Technology Review. More about AUVs, or autonomous underwater vehicles.
*Our thanks to:*
Marcus Gary
Ph. D. candidate
Jackson School of Geosciences
The University of Texas at Austin
Hydrologist, USGS
As of 5:30 pm EDT today, still having problems getting the podcast in iTunes. This happened for a little while a few months ago as well. At that time iTunes gave a specific script error when it could not download. Unfortunately, this time it just says “Unknown error 8006”… check to make sure the URL is correct.
Have checked the URL… even re-entered myself… still no luck.
I have tried repeatedly to listen to the 31-min. podcast by Marcus Gary, but when I click on the highlighted text in the blue strip on this page, it just kicks me over to another part of this site — one that doesn’t offer the podcast. Something is screwed up.
what do you exactly expect from a sink hole.the world mysterious places
Re podcast access—click on “download,” and you’ll be able to hear Marcus Gary.
However, I could not e-mail it. The dropdown menu says “friend,” but a click did not get me into n e-mail mode. Will keep at it.
To email a link to the podcast, right-click the download link and choose “Copy shortcut” in Internet Explorer or “copy link location” in Firefox, then go to a new email in your mail program and paste the link.