All modern life shares a robust, hardy, efficient system of intertwined chemicals that propagate themselves. This system must have emerged from a simpler, less efficient, more delicate one. But what was that system, and why ...
Astrobiology
Jan 26, 2024
3
152
How did the first chemical reactions get started at the origin of life and what was their source of energy? Researchers at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have reconstructed the metabolism of the last universal ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 13, 2021
0
67
The hydrothermal vent fluids from the Gorda Ridge spreading center in the northeast Pacific Ocean create a biological hub of activity in the deep sea. There, in the dark ocean, a unique food web thrives not on photosynthesis ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 16, 2021
1
370
By some estimates, a third of the Earth's organisms by mass live in our planet's rocks and sediments, yet their lives and ecology are almost a complete mystery. This week, microbiologist James Holden at the University of ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 6, 2012
2
0
Alien life could potentially exist on the undersides of the icy shells of Jupiter's moon Europa and other frozen worlds thanks to the intersection of chemical energy rising up from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor and ...
Space Exploration
Mar 9, 2018
0
104
Deep-sea hydrothermal vents are hot springs on the ocean floor. Sea water penetrates into the ocean crust, becomes heated, and rises to the seafloor surface carrying dissolved nutrients. Around these vents, far from any sunlight, ...
Evolution
Nov 30, 2023
0
30
About 55 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean was born. Until then, Europe and America were connected. As the continents began to move apart, the Earth's crust between them ruptured, releasing large volumes of magma. This ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 3, 2023
1
179
Enceladus is the tiny moon of Saturn that seems to have it all. Its icy surface is intricately carved by ongoing geological processes. Its icy shell overlies an internal, liquid ocean. There, chemically charged warm water ...
Astrobiology
Jun 18, 2023
2
45
Though it remains unknown how life began, there is a community of scientists who suspect it occurred in or around deep sea hydrothermal environments. At such sites, water heated by contact with hot rocks from Earth's mantle ...
Materials Science
Jul 25, 2019
3
102
A UK-Canadian team of scientists has discovered ancient pockets of water, which have been isolated deep underground for billions of years and contain abundant chemicals known to support life.
Earth Sciences
May 15, 2013
0
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