A remotely operated vehicle livestreaming scientific research in the depths of the CentralPacific Oceanshocked audiences after capturing footage of what appeared to be a yellow brick road over 1km from the surface.
It occurred back in 2022 during the Luʻuaeaahikiikekumu leg of the Ocean Exploration Trust'sPacificexpedition, during which its exploration vessel Nautilus mapped nearly 30,000 square kilometres of seafloor and collected samples in a bid to better understand how ancientvolcanoesformed and how various organisms survive among them. During the research, the Nautilusserved as a base for thescientistsand as a mothership from which tethered,remotely controlled vehicles could be sent deep underwater to explore.
These deep-sea trips could be watched like on the trust's YouTube channel, giving viewers at home a stunning glimpse of a rarely explored part of the planet, due to the prohibitively high pressure at lower depths.
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One of the vehicles, ROV Hercules, was navigating an underwater mountain north of Hawaiʻi when its camera picked up images that left people on the stream open-mouthed.
It showed what appeared to the untrained to be a paved brick road on the Nootka Seamount, a deep volcanic mountain within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, prompting jokes about discovering the lost city of Atlantis among the research team.
Besides looking like a path laid by human hands, its yellow hue also prompted comparisons to the famous path from Munchkinland to the Emerald City in L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was further popularised by the iconic 1939 film adaptation.
But while the sight of what looked like human-made brickwork on the seafloor may have thrilled fans of theories about ancient lost civilisations, according to the trust's experts, there is an entirely scientific explanation,Eco Newspreviously reported.
What appears to be a path of tiles or bricks is actually a "fractured flow of hyaloclastite rock (a volcanic rock formed in high-energy eruptions where many rock fragments settle to the seabed)", the description on a video showing the phenomenon on the EVNautilus YouTube channel explains.
Source: Daily Express :: World Feed
