Science

Methanoliparia, a species of archaea from deep-sea oil seeps of the Gulf of Mexico, splits long-chain hydrocarbons into methane and carbon dioxide, according to a new paper published in the journal mBio. Methanoliparia is an important methanogenic alkane degrader in subsurface environments, producing methane by alkane disproportionation as a single …

Underwater archaeologists working off the coast of the Isle of Wight have discovered an 8,000-year-old structure next to what is believed to be the world’s oldest known boat building site. Historian Dan Snow inspecting the 8,000-year-old wooden platform off the coast of the Isle of Wight, UK. Image credit: Maritime …

  NASA is moving ahead with one of its most ambitious upcoming missions. The Europa Clipper has cleared a major bureaucratic hurdle, allowing the agency to begin final design and construction of the spacecraft that will explore the icy moon of Jupiter. The mission will begin to take shape over …

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Wind erosion has been ruled out as the primary cause of methane gas release on Mars, Newcastle University academics have shown.   Methane can be produced over time through both geological and biological routes and since its first detection in the Martian atmosphere in 2003, there …

Like canaries in a coal mine, mussels have long been used as ‘bio-indicators’ of the health of the seas, lakes and rivers they inhabit Seafood lovers who prize the mussel for its earthy taste and succulent flesh may be unaware of its growing potential in the fight against water pollution. …

An international team of biologists has discovered and described a new species of medicinal leech living in the freshwater wetlands of the eastern United States. It is the first description of a North American medicinal leech since 1975. Macrobdella mimicus. Image credit: Ian Cook. Leeches are parasitic worms, many of …

A collection of stone artifacts unearthed at the archaeological site of Tolbor-16 in the northern Khangai Mountains of Mongolia indicate that anatomically modern Homo sapiens traveled across the Eurasian steppe 45,000 years ago, about 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. The Tolbor-16 site (arrow) in the western flank of the …

  The Milky Way galaxy is enormous, and we’ve scanned only the tiniest fraction of it in search of planets. We’ve spotted a few thousand of them orbiting distant stars, and now a team of researchers from Penn State University has used that data to estimate the number of Earth-like …

An international team of scientists has found alterations of task-based functional brain connectivity in a group of astronauts after a long-duration spaceflight. The findings appear in the journal Frontiers in Physiology. JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide, ISS Expedition 32 flight engineer, taking a space selfie during extravehicular activity on September 5, …

A new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, has ruled out the possibility that the levels of methane detected in the Martian atmosphere could be produced by the wind erosion of rocks, releasing trapped methane from fluid inclusions and fractures on the planets’ surface. A view of Mars showing …