Word: sulfured
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...explore. Oceans cover nearly three-quarters of the planet's surface--336 million cu. mi. of water that reaches an average depth of 2.3 miles. The sea's intricate food webs support more life by weight and a greater diversity of animals than any other ecosystem, from sulfur-eating bacteria clustered around deep-sea vents to fish that light up like New York City's Times Square billboards to lure their prey. Somewhere below there even lurks the last certified sea monster left from pre-scientific times: the 64-ft.-long giant squid...
...Seawater percolates down through cracks in the crust, getting progressively hotter. It doesn't boil, despite temperatures reaching up to 400 degrees C, because it is under terrific pressure. Finally, the hot water gushes back up in murky clouds that cool rapidly, dumping dissolved minerals, including zinc, copper, iron, sulfur compounds and silica, onto the ocean floor. The material hardens into chimneys, known as "black smokers" (one, nicknamed Godzilla, towers 148 ft. above the bottom...
Similarly, he says that efforts to lessen sulfur dioxide emissions in order to reduce acid rain could have a negative effect, by cutting down the number of particles in the atmosphere. This would mean that less sunlight is reflected back into space, increasing global warming...
...NASA scientists have another explanation. In a newly published report they note that the Yucatan rock around Chicxulub contains abundant amounts of sulfur. The blast must have vaporized the sulfur, they say, and spewed more than 100 billion tons of it into the atmosphere, where it mixed with moisture to form tiny drops of sulfuric acid. These drops created a barrier that could have reflected enough sunlight back into space to drop temperatures to near freezing, and could have remained airborne for decades. "It could have been up to a century," says Kevin Baines, an atmostpheric scientist at NASA...
Boslough describes himself as "totally agnostic" on the existence of antipodal volcanism. J.P.L.'s Kevin Baines, however, isn't neutral when it comes to the NASA team's sulfuric acid theory. "If the asteroid had struck almost any other place on earth, it wouldn't have generated this tremendous amount of sulfur." he says. "Dinosaurs would still be roaming the earth...