How does Earth & Environmental Science Professor Carol Stein find heat on a cold seafloor?
Carol A. Stein’s research involves dropping a long spear from a ship to the deep seafloor miles below to measure heat leaking from the solid rock to the water above. “It’s hard to believe,” she says, “but this is one of our best ways to understand how the solid earth works and how it influences the chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere. Cold seawater flows down into the rock, exchanges chemicals, and returns to the oceans. It’s hard to track the flow of water directly, so we put a probe into the seafloor and figure out how much water is moving from the temperature changes it causes.
