Where did life come from? In recent years, many scientists have shifted from favouring a "primordial soup" in pools of water to hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean as the original source of life on Earth. But one of the ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 7, 2019
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56
By creating protocells in hot, alkaline seawater, a UCL-led research team has added to evidence that the origin of life could have been in deep-sea hydrothermal vents rather than shallow pools.
Evolution
Nov 4, 2019
3
406
Deep-sea mussels, which rely on cooperative symbiotic bacteria for their food, harbor a surprisingly high diversity of these bacterial "cooks": Up to 16 different bacterial strains live in the mussel's gills, each with its ...
Ecology
Oct 15, 2019
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105
New kinds of organic compounds, the ingredients of amino acids, have been detected in the plumes bursting from Saturn's moon Enceladus. The findings are the result of the ongoing deep dive into data from NASA's Cassini mission.
Astronomy
Oct 2, 2019
6
1147
It is completely dark, just above freezing cold and the pressure is crushing: this is the deep-sea floor. Food is very scarce in this huge region, yet a great diversity of animals have adapted to exploit and recycle resources ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 9, 2019
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27
Geothermal manifestations at Earth's surface can be mapped and characterized by a variety of well-established exploration methods. However, mapping hydrothermal vents in aquatic environments is more challenging as conventional ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 22, 2019
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6
New research from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) published Aug. 19, 2019, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science provides evidence of the formation and abundance of abiotic methane—methane formed ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 20, 2019
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1003
On television, the eruption of volcano shoots magma right out of the top. However, it is not so uncommon that magma erupts from the volcano's flank rather than its summit. After leaving the underground magma chamber, the ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 31, 2019
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132
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
Hydrothermal vents host rare species at incredibly high density comparable to tropical rainforests or coral reefs. Forty years ago, the first descriptions of the ecosystems around these deep underwater heat funnels changed ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 23, 2019
0
7
