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While the Mars rovers are "up there" doing their work looking for signs of extraterrestrial life, University of New Hampshire scientist Karen Von Damm and her students are headed down to the "Hole to Hell" at the bottom of the deep blue sea. Their destination - a place where Mother Earth "burps up a new skin" in a cloud of acidic black smoke and temperatures rise to more than 700 degrees Fahrenheit, and where giant tube worms and clams form colonies around the cracks that ring the globe. The world of these mid-ocean ridges was discovered just 27 years ago, when Karen was doing her Ph.D. thesis.

Karen is a professor of chemical oceanography who studies deep sea hydrothermal systems.
This interview was recorded in 2002 when Karen had just returned from a month long voyage to the East Pacific Rise at 9-10 degrees north latitude (referred to simply as "9 North") off the coast of Mexico. This past Monday she and her students took off for another two-week voyage.