entually, not to say improbably, Alvin ructed byGeneral Mills, t a factory o producebreakfast cereals.

    As for tle idea. ell into t maps available to oceanograptle detail fromscattered surveys going back to 1929 grafted onto, essentially an ocean of guess cs o guide submarines ts, but it didn’t o fall into Soviet  kept its knoo make do ciquated surveys or relyon oday our knoion. If you look at tandard backyard telescope you antial craters—Fracastorious, Blancanus, Zaco anylunar scientist—t termaps of Mars than we do of our own seabeds.

    At tigative tecrifle ad y-four t overboard from a Korean cargo sorm in to Vietnam, o trace currents more accurately they ever had before.

    today Alvin is nearly forty years old, but it still remains America’s premier research vessel.

    till no submersibles t can go any’s surface. A typical submersible costsabout $25,000 a day to operate, so to ter on a  to sea in t tumble on someterest. It’s ratractors after dark. According to Robert Kunzig, inized“perhe sea’s darkness. Maybe less. Maybe much less.”

    But oceanograp industrious, and tantdiscoveries ed resources—including, in 1977, one of t important andstartling biological discoveries of tietury. In t year Alvin found teemingcolonies of large organisms living on and around deep-sea vents off tube en feet long, clams a foot i ence to vast colonies of bacteria tenance from oxic to surface creatures—t eadily from ts. It  of sunliged em based not on posynt on c tbiologi