photo, courtesy university of washington

Stop whatever you’re doing (particularly if it’s shopping for a new scary ambient album). Immediately direct your web browser to this story about the sounds of deep sea thermal vents. [uwnews] While you might have imagined that underwater sounded like that musical number in the Little Mermaid where the crab sings along with a comical fish orchestra, the truth is far more interesting.

University of Washington oceanography doctoral student Timothy Crone hopped aboard a tiny submarine and planted recording devices near super hot (>750 F!) hydrothermal vents and brought their rumbles back to the rest of us [PLoS]. Now you can listen to the kind of awesome, kind of scary noises that pour out of the smoky volcanic ridges in the earth’s surface [uwnews]. Download them to your iPod, make a playlist, and put it on repeat the next time you need to tune out a chatty co-worker or bus passenger. You can play them online — even [inadvertently] allowing on-the-fly mashups by stopping and starting multiple tracks to play simultaneously.

But what this is really calling for is a remix album. Take the samples, mix them up, and send us your creations!

(via seattle post-intelligencer [#])