News for and about the Internet2 community

["Lauren B. Kallens" <>]

Live TV-Quality Video of Lost City Expedition Available Via Internet2
Multicast

Live TV-quality video from a 10-day undersea expedition to the hydrothermal
vents field of Lost City will be multicast over Internet2 networks beginning
July 23rd through August 1st.

The multicast address is 233.55.245.254 port 4000. Produced shows will take
place each day at 10am, 12pm, 2pm and 4pm U.S. Eastern Time.

Video is being streamed from the NOAA Research Vessel Ronald H. Brown. 
The ship departed Woods Hole, Massachusetts on July 16 and traveled nearly
3000 miles to the dive site located almost dead center in the Atlantic
Ocean.

Dr. Bob Ballard, Dr. Dwight Coleman, Todd Gregory and the rest of the
Institute for Exploration expedition team launched this mission to conduct
round-the-clock explorations using IFE's robotic vehicles (ROV) Argus and
Hercules. The ROVs are supported by a state-of-the-art shipboard control
system that will send live high-definiton video, audio and scientific data
to a shore-based command center at the University of Rhode Island, Graduate
School of Oceanography. From there the transmissions are sent via Internet2
networks and satellite downlink to various scientific sites around the
country, including the 18 Immersion Presents sites participating in the
"live" broadcasts.

Explorations at Lost City will focus on 2 primary activities, collection of
geologic and biologic data sets and fluid samples, and to provide
educational programming via Immersion Presents to museums, aquariums and
Boys and Girls Clubs nationwide.

Co-principal investigator on the expedition is Dr. Deb Kelley of the
University of Washington. Dr. Kelley discovered the Lost City vents in
December, 2000. These vents are totally different from the so-called "black
smoker" vents first discovered by Dr. Ballard and others in 1977. 

The chimneys in the Lost City are much taller than black smoker chimneys and
are made out of calcium carbonate, the same mineral that forms stalactites
and stalagmites in above-ground limestone caves, not the metal-rich minerals
of the black smokers. The Lost City vents are on a flat-topped mountain on
ocean crust that is more than 1.5 million years old, instead of the much
younger seafloor volcanoes that normally host the black smoker systems. And,
the tiny creatures at the Lost City vents thrive in alkaline fluids that at
40-90°C are much cooler than the acidic jets at up to 400°C emitted by black
smokers.

More on the expedition to Lost City can be found by visiting the following
sites:

http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/05lostcity
http://www.immersionpresents.org




Contact:
Lauren Kallens
Internet2