Scientists baffled by deep-sea organisms after underwater expedition goes "where no other human being had been before"
CBSN
When Chilean scientist Osvaldo Ulloa led an expedition 8,000 meters under the sea to an area where no human had ever been, his team discovered microscopic organisms that generated more questions than answers. The January submarine expedition dove into the Atacama Trench, created by the meeting of two tectonic plates in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
"We pulled off the feat of taking humans into the trench where no other human being had been before," Ulloa, the director of the Millennium Institute of Oceanography at the University of Concepcion, told AFP.
He was joined by American explorer Victor Vescovo and Millennium assistant director Ruben Escribano on the 12-week journey off Chile's northern coast in the 3,650-mile long trench that extends up to Ecuador.
Scientists say they've discovered the world's biggest coral, so huge it was mistaken for a shipwreck
Scientists say they have found the world's largest coral near the Pacific's Solomon Islands, announcing Thursday a major discovery "pulsing with life and color." The coral is so immense that researchers sailing the crystal waters of the Solomon archipelago initially thought they'd stumbled across a hulking shipwreck.