Ewine van Dishoeck, astronomer: ‘We are the first generation who can bring the question of life on other planets from the realm of philosophy into real science’
Scientists have now made the most comprehensive tally yet of deep-sea exploration — 43,681 dive records dating back to 1958 — and found that humans have directly seen less than 0.001% of the deep ocean floor, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, leaving the vast seafloor across 66% of Earth’s surface essentially unobserved.