Mining Hydrothermal Vents For Renewable Electricity, Drinking Water + Valuable Minerals
Only after I snoozed my way through high school science class did science become more compelling than science fiction.
Back then, there was just no compelling reason to pay attention. Just a browzy fly buzzing in a smelly boring lab full of long agreed-upon dull principles that were really neither here nor there. In those days there were no colliding continents or hydrothermal vents or extremophile lifeforms. We looked to sci-fi for that.
Who knew that our planet would soon be busting at the seams with 7 billion of us. That our fossil fuel use would threaten our survival with climate changes — on a level unseen on the planet since Cyanobacteria made it safe it for oxygen-breathers 4 billion years ago.
Or that we would not only discover vast strange heat sources under the ocean but that we’d actually consider mining these hydrothermal vents for renewable energy: That was the sort of story you’d only find in science fiction back then.
But yet, here we are. This is not science fiction:
