Among the things that make the Red Sea famous is that this sea was what the Bible’s Moses parted so he and his fellow Israelites could escape slavery from Egypt.
Now, scientists dived to the bottom of the Red Sea to discover certain things that could give you goosebumps.
Researchers from the University of Miami went beneath the surface of this sea, particularly 1.1 miles.
But first, to give you a background, the Red Sea is situated in the inlet of the Indian Ocean between Asia and Africa. While it isn’t literally red in color, it gets this name from the seasonal blooms of the red-colored sawdust near the water’s face.
At the bottom of this sea, the researchers found a “deep-sea brine pool,” which, according to Sam Purkis, professor and chair of the University of Miami’s Department of Marine Geosciences, provides us with a lot of insights about “the early Earth.”
The largest pool they found measured 107,000 square feet across. They also found three smaller pools which were around 107 square feet in diameter.
Now these pools are dubbed “death pools,” since they are devoid of oxygen. They don’t provide life for most animals, and those that stray into the brine are “immediately stunned or killed.”
However, what’s interesting is that there is a “rich oasis” of life in these depths, as well as opportunistic predators that feed on the animals straying into the pools, and “extremophile microbes” that can survive in these pools.
The researchers said these death pools can provide an understanding about how life began on Earth, and even of potential life on other planets.
“Our current understanding is that life originated on Earth in the deep sea, almost certainly in anoxic — without oxygen — conditions, Purkis told the media. “Studying this community hence allows a glimpse into the sort of conditions where life first appeared on our planet, and might guide the search for life on other ‘water worlds’ in our solar system and beyond.”
