Abstract
SINCE the discovery of excess 3He in Pacific deep waters1, it has been argued that the source of this anomaly is the mid-depth injection of primordial helium from seafloor spreading centres1,2. This hypothesis is consistent with the spatial distribution of excess 3He in the deep waters3–5, its presence in the glassy (rapidly quenched) margins of extruded ocean basalts6,7, and the detection of a large 3He excess in a ‘thermal plume’ (thermal anomaly ∼0.1 °C, sampled using a deep-tow sled) over the Galapagos Spreading Centre8–10. In this report, we summarise 37 measurements of excess helium in hydrothermal waters sampled using the Alvin deep submersible at the Galapagos Spreading Centre during February and March of 1977.
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JENKINS, W., EDMOND, J. & CORLISS, J. Excess 3He and 4He in Galapagos submarine hydrothermal waters. Nature 272, 156–158 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/272156a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/272156a0
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