It is a long-lived site of active and inactive ultramafic-hosted serpentinization,[1] abiotically producing many simple molecules such as methane and hydrogen which are fundamental to microbial life.

[5] The discovery of the Lost City prompted the National Science Foundation to fund a second, 32-day voyage (AT07-34) to the site in 2003 in order to use Alvin and the autonomous vehicle ABE with a greater emphasis on scientific sampling and creating a high-resolution bathymetric map of the vent field.

[6] ABE would participate in a combined 17 dive expeditions including follow-up visits, creating a bathymetry profile for 3.3 square kilometres (1.3 sq mi) of the massif.

[10] In July 2005, Lost City was explored for nine days by Hercules and Argus on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration vessel Ronald H. Brown, with video streamed live to the University of Washington in Seattle.

[15] 2015 saw a visit from the International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 357, which emphasized drilling on the Atlantis Massif to explore off-axis circulation.

In July and August 2018, the French TRANSECT cruise was conducted on L'Atalante utilizing the ROV VICTOR to collect a variety of measurements and samples.

[18] The following month, American cruise AT42-01, nicknamed Return to the Lost City, was undertaken to revisit the vent field after many years, featuring many members of the original discovery team in 2000.

In March 2023, the first cruise of the RV Falkor Too was undertaken to deploy a new in-situ methane sensor to search for hydrothermal activity similar to that of Lost City along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

[23] Lost City is located in the North Atlantic Ocean on the seafloor mountain Atlantis Massif, which is approximately the size of Mount Rainier.

Breccia, gabbros, and peridotites are dominating rock types as one maneuvers away from the field, which are prone to mass wasting as the bathymetry steepens.

Rubble tends to accumulate at areas no steeper than 60 degrees bounding the field, and can undergo lithification depending on how far it is located from Lost City.

Mineral compositions change with aragonite succeeded by calcite and brucite being removed through dissolution, and the chimneys darken to a grey or brown color.

[31] Other animals such as tube worms and giant clams that are abundant in typical black smoker vents, however, are absent from Lost City.

[31] Lost City provides geologists, chemists, and biologists a working ecosystem for the study of life in extreme environments and other processes driven by abiotic production of methane and hydrogen by serpentinisation.

Speculation has been offered that ancient versions of similar alkaline hydrothermal vents in the seas of a young Earth were the birthplace of all life, constituting the planet's original abiogenesis.

[36] These alkaline hydrothermal vents also continuously generate acetyl thioesters, providing both the starting point for more complex organic molecules and the energy needed to produce them.

They showed that because of the high free energy change of thioester hydrolysis and their corresponding low equilibrium constants, it is unlikely that these species could have accumulated abiotically to any significant extent in the Lost City fields.

The combination of different extremophile elements suggests that Lost City organisms are more extreme than at other locations, making them particularly interesting subjects of study on the requirements for life.

[38] Given the only requirements for serpentinization are olivine and seawater, locations like Lost City could theoretically exist on extraterrestrial bodies with liquid water such as Europa and Enceladus.

[39] The IMAX flange was unnamed prior to the documentary's release, but is extremely recognizable in the film and subsequently picked up the nickname of the video format played in theaters.