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\"Presents the story of the lost city of Atlantis and examines discoveries that are claimed to be Atlantis, ultimately stating there is no hard proof that Atlantis existed\"-- Provided by publisher.

The Lost City hydrothermal field is a dramatic example of the biological potential of serpentinization. Microbial life is prevalent throughout the Lost City chimneys, powered by the hydrogen gas and organic molecules produced by serpentinization and its associated geochemical reactions. Microbial life in the serpentinite subsurface below the Lost City chimneys, however, is unlikely to be as dense or active. The marine serpentinite subsurface poses serious challenges for microbial activity, including low porosities, the combination of stressors of elevated temperature, high pH and a lack of bioavailable ∑CO 2 . A better understanding of the biological opportunities and challenges in serpentinizing systems would provide important insights into the total habitable volume of Earth's crust and for the potential of the origin and persistence of life in Earth's subsurface environments. Furthermore, the limitations to life in serpentinizing subsurface environments on Earth have significant implications for the habitability of subsurface environments on ocean worlds such as Europa and Enceladus. Here, we review the requirements and limitations of life in serpentinizing systems, informed by our research at the Lost City and the underwater mountain on which it resides, the Atlantis Massif. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Serpentinite in the Earth System’.

\"Presents the legend of Atlantis, including current theories about possible location sites\"--Provided by publisher.

Understanding the effects of spaceflight on microbial communities is crucial for the success of long-term, manned space missions. Surface-associated bacterial communities, known as biofilms, were abundant on the Mir space station and continue to be a challenge on the International Space Station. The health and safety hazards linked to the development of biofilms are of particular concern due to the suppression of immune function observed during spaceflight. While planktonic cultures of microbes have indicated that spaceflight can lead to increases in growth and virulence, the effects of spaceflight on biofilm development and physiology remain unclear. To address this issue, Pseudomonas aeruginosa was cultured during two Space Shuttle Atlantis missions: STS-132 and STS-135, and the biofilms formed during spaceflight were characterized. Spaceflight was observed to increase the number of viable cells, biofilm biomass, and thickness relative to normal gravity controls. Moreover, the biofilms formed during spaceflight exhibited a column-and-canopy structure that has not been observed on Earth. The increase in the amount of biofilms and the formation of the novel architecture during spaceflight were observed to be independent of carbon source and phosphate concentrations in the media. However, flagella-driven motility was shown to be essential for the formation of this biofilm architecture during spaceflight. These findings represent the first evidence that spaceflight affects community-level behaviors of bacteria and highlight the importance of understanding how both harmful and beneficial human-microbe interactions may be altered during spaceflight.

Hydrogen is targeted to have a significant influence on the energy mix in the upcoming years. Its underground injection is an efficient solution for large-scale and long-term storage. Furthermore, natural hydrogen emissions have been proven in several locations of the world, and the potential underground accumulations constitute exciting carbon-free energy sources. In this context, comprehensive models are necessary to better constrain hydrogen behavior in geological formations. In particular, solubility in brines is a key-parameter, as it directly impacts hydrogen reactivity and migration in porous media. In this work, Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out to generate new simulated data of hydrogen solubility in aqueous NaCl solutions in temperature and salinity ranges of interest for geological applications, and for which no experimental data are currently available. For these simulations, molecular models have been selected for hydrogen, water and Na+ and Cl- to reproduce phase properties of pure components and brine densities. To model solvent-solutes and solutes-solutes interactions, it was shown that the Lorentz-Berthelot mixing rules with a constant interaction binary parameter are the most appropriate to reproduce the experimental hydrogen Henry constants in salted water. With this force field, simulation results match measured solubilities with an average deviation of 6%. Additionally, simulation reproduced the expected behaviors of the H2O + H2 + NaCl system, such as the salting-out effect, a minimum hydrogen solubility close to 57°C, and a decrease of the Henry constant with increasing temperature. The force field was then used in extrapolation to determine hydrogen Henry constants for temperatures up to 300°C and salinities up to 2 mol/kgH2O. Using the experimental measures and these new simulated data generated by molecular simulation, a binary interaction parameter of the Soreide and Whiston equation of state has been fitted. The obtained model allows fast and reliable phase equilibrium calculations, and it was applied to illustrative cases relevant for hydrogen geological storage or H2 natural emissions.

Jack and his friends desperately search for the rest of the lost Loculi and confront the armies of Artemis in order to rescue Aly, who has been pulled back into Atlantis by King Uhla'ar.

In two companion papers, we report the detailed geological and mineralogical study of two emblematic serpentinized ultramafic bodies of the western North Pyrenean Zone (NPZ), the Urdach massif (this paper) and the Saraille massif (paper 2). The peridotites have been exhumed to lower crustal levels during the Cretaceous rifting period in the future NPZ. They are associated with Mesozoic pre-rift metamorphic sediments and small units of thinned Paleozoic basement that were deformed during the mantle exhumation event. Based on detailed geological cross-sections and microprobe mineralogical analyses, we describe the lithology of the two major extensional fault zones that accommodated: (i) the progressive exhumation of the lherzolites along the Cretaceous basin axis; (ii) the lateral extraction of the continental crust beneath the rift shoulders and; (iii) the decoupling of the pre-rift cover along the Upper Triassic (Keuper) evaporites and clays, allowing its gliding and conservation in the basin center. These two fault zones are the (lower) crust-mantle detachment and the (upper) cover decollement located respectively at the crust-mantle boundary and at the base of the detached pre-rift cover. The Urdach peridotites were exposed to the seafloor during the Late Albian and underwent local pervasive carbonation and crystallization of calcite in a network of orthogonal veins (ophicalcites). The carbonated serpentinized peridotites were partly covered by debris-flows carrying fragments of both the ultramafics and Paleozoic crustal rocks now forming the polymictic Urdach breccia. The mantle rocks are involved in a Pyrenean overturned fold together with thin units of crustal mylonites. Continent-derived and mantle-derived fluids that circulated along the Urdach crust-mantle detachment led to the crystallization of abundant metasomatic rocks containing quartz, calcite, Cr-rich chlorites, Cr-rich white micas and pyrite. Two samples of metasomatized material from the crust-mantle detachment yielded in situ zircon U/Pb ages of 112.9±1.6 Ma and 109.4±1.2 Ma, thus confirming the Late Albian age of the metasomatic event. The cover decollement is a 30-m thick fault zone which also includes metasomatic rocks of greenschist facies, such as serpentine-calcite association and listvenites, indicating large-scale fluid-rock interactions implying both ultramafic and continental material. The lowermost pre-rift cover is generally missing along the cover decollement due to tectonic disruption during mantle exhumation and continental crust elision. Locally, metasomatized and strongly tectonized Triassic remnants are found as witnesses of the sole at the base of the detached pre-rift cover. We also report the discovery of a spherulitic alkaline lava flow emplaced over the exhumed mantle. These data collectively allow to propose a reconstruction of the architecture and fluid-rock interaction history of the distal domain of the upper Cretaceous northern Iberia margin now inverted in the NPZ.

IODP Expedition 357 drilled 17 shallow sites scattered over ~ 10 km in the west to east spreading direction across the Atlantis Massif oceanic core complex (OCC, MAR, 30 ºN). Mantle exposed in the footwall of the Atlantic Massif OCC is nearly wholly serpentinized (80–100%) harzburgite and subordinate dunite. A recent whole-rock chemistry study by Whattam et al. (Chemical Geology 594. 10.1016/j.chemgeo.2021.120681, 2022) subdivides Atlantis Massif peridotites into: Type I fluid–rock dominated serpentinite, which exhibits almost nil evidence of melt-impregnation or silica metasomatism; Type II melt–rock dominated, mafic melt-impregnated serpentinite; and Type III melt–rock dominated Si-metasomatized serpentinite. In this study, on the basis of EPMA, three kinds of Cr–spinel are distinguished in Expedition 357 serpentinite: (I) primary, unmetamorphosed mantle array, (II) low-Ti metamorphosed, and (III) high-Ti melt reacted. All Cr–spinel of western site Type I serpentinite is unmetamorphosed ( n  = 34) and comprises 68% of all unmetamorphosed Cr–spinel. Metamorphosed Cr–spinel ( n  = 100) are the most abundant and occur in the central and eastern site Type II and Type III serpentinite, whereas melt-reacted Cr–spinel and chromite are restricted to the central sites and occur predominantly in serpentinized dunite. Estimates of the degree of melt extraction of Type I serpentinite using F  = 10ln(spinel Cr#) + 24 are ~ 9–17%. Fugacity calculations of primary, unmetamorphosed Cr–spinel yield Δlog( f O 2 ) FMQ of − 1.7 to + 1.0 and calculations using olivine–spinel Mg–Fe exchange thermometry yield a mean closure temperature of 808 ± 39 °C. Mafic melt-impregnation resulted in Cr–spinel with anomalously high TiO 2 of 0.27–0.68 wt.% and production of Ti-rich chromite (up to 1.23 wt.% TiO 2 ). Greenschist facies metamorphism (< 500 °C) resulted in Mg–Fe 2+ exchange between Cr–spinel and forsterite and anomalously low Cr–spinel Mg#; higher degrees of amphibolite facies metamorphism (~ 500–700 °C) also resulted in anomalously high Cr# due to Al–Cr exchange. As has been previously established, significant Al loss from chromite cores above 550 °C is the result of equilibration with fluids in equilibrium with chlorite, which may be valid for our samples. On the basis of Cr–spinel vs. whole-rock compositions, a clear relationship exists between melt-impregnation and metamorphism of central and eastern serpentinite, which we postulate to be the result of heat associated with magma injection and subsequent localized contact metamorphism. To our knowledge, such a relation between mafic melt-impregnation of peridotite and metamorphism (of peridotite) has not previously been established in general and specifically for the Atlantis Massif peridotite. Closure temperatures of 440–731 °C of metamorphosed Cr–spinel approximate greenschist to amphibolite facies metamorphic conditions.