[ Golden Gater Online - August 28, 1997 ]
A newly-surfaced creature from the deep has wormed its way into a national spotlight, but a pair of SF State researchers are trying to keep their discovery down to Earth.
During the summer, scientist Alissa Arp, a biology professor and the director of SF State's Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies, and researcher David Julian, a campus lecturer and an associate research scientist at the center, participated in a deep-sea expedition with a national team of university scientists. But their routine mission studying the murky bottom of the Gulf of Mexico unearthed a strange phenomenon ñ small, centipede-like worms living in a mound of toxic methane ice, where no life was thought to exist.
"It's rather unusual to find a totally new species," Julian said. "It's one of the only times I can think of that something really notable happened on an expedition that was good -- usually it's a storm or a power failure."
Julian's subdued reaction to the discovery contrasts the attention the worms received by the media and some members of the scientific community after the July 15 expedition. In particular, the worms --which have been dubbed "iceworms" -- have achieved cult-like status as potential cousins to life forms on other planets, such as Mars, on which methane ice is prevalent.
But Arp and Julian agree the idea is far-fetched, in large-part because the environments on different planets vary, so the presence of methane ice alone is not enough to provide evidence of life-supporting conditions.
"Someone's going to get mad at me for bursting the bubble, but these worms don't give much support to (theories) about life on other planets," Julian said.
Even so, scientists on the expedition couldn't resist assigning the creatures an other-worldly moniker. Arp said the team called the worms "ice-borgs" -- a name drawn from a type of alien featured on the television program "Star Trek: The Next Generation." The aliens, called "borgs," are cyborgs whose brains are hooked up to a mainframe computer.
Arp said the resemblance is due to the worm's tendency to colonize the honeycombed underside of the mounds.
"Each worm lines up in the chambers. They sit in them like they're hooked up to the master brain, or something," she said.
Arp pointed out that while the iceworm's living quarters are unusual, the creature actually resembles another variety of marine worm. The main difference between the two, she said, is their habitat.
Charles Fisher, a Pennsylvania State University scientist who led the expedition, is credited with the discovery of the pink, 2-inch-long worms, since they were found when he and Julian separated from the main ship, embarking on a submarine cruise 1,800 feet below the surface. But Julian said the vessel's chief sub-pilot was the one who spied movement on a mushroom-shaped ice mound.
"He said he saw something moving, but we didn't believe him," Julian said. "Lots of people have looked at these formations before, but apparently no one looked close enough."
[ Golden Gater - August 28, 1997 ]