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Robotic vehicles find the Pacific Ocean's deepest thermal vents
Robotic underwater vehicles from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Research Institute just helped discover one of the Earth's more elusive scientific treasures. Both an autonomous mapping craft and a remotely operated counterpart (which collected video and samples) traveled 12,500 feet to the bottom of Mexico's Pescadero Basin to find the Pacific's deepest hot hydrothermal vents. The machines achieved their feat in just two days, versus the years that it'd take for conventional undersea mapping -- and they achieved the kind of detail that would likely be difficult or impossible using those earlier techniques.
