83 results
-
Letters to the editor
Fusion reactions It is not true that fusion packs the highest punch of any known energy-generating process (“Ignition failed,” SN: 4/20/13, p. 26). Matter-antimatter annihilation far exceeds it (Star Trek had it right back in the 1960s). I believe that under certain conditions, matter falling into a black hole can also yield more energy than […]
- Life
Year in Review: Your body is mostly microbes
Microbiome results argue for new view of animals as superorganisms.
- Earth
Earth & Environment
Soot’s contributions to global warming may be overestimated, and unusual source of oceans’ methane discovered.
-
New species of the year
More creatures, less Latin used to describe them.
- Microbes
The vast virome
When it comes to the microbiome, bacteria get all the press. But virologists are starting to realize that their subjects also do a lot more than make people sick.
- Tech
Antarctic test of novel ice drill poised to begin
Any day now, a team of 40 scientists and support personnel expects to begin using a warm, high pressure jet of water to bore a 30 centimeter hole through 83 meters of ice. Once it breaks through to the sea below, they’ll have a few days to quickly sample life from water before the hole begins freezing up again. It's just a test. But if all goes well, in a few weeks the team will move 700 miles and bore an even deeper hole to sample for freshwater life that may have been living for eons outside even indirect contact with Earth’s atmosphere.
- Earth
Marine microbes prove potent greenhouse gas emitters
Earth’s oceans emit an estimated 30 percent of the nitrous oxide, or N2O, entering the atmosphere. Yet the source of this potent greenhouse gas has puzzled scientists for years. Bacteria — long the leading candidate — can generate nitrous oxide, but the seas don’t seem to contain enough to account for all of the nitrous oxide that the marine world has been coughing up. Now researchers offer a better candidate.
-
-
Traces of Inaugural Life
Geologists, biologists join forces to tell new stories about the first cells on Earth.
- Chemistry
Wee work-around lets microbes thrive
Some crafty, salt-loving cells use stolen equipment for processing a key cellular building block.
-
- Life
Buried microbes coax energy from rock
In experiments, microorganisms can stimulate minerals to produce hydrogen, a key fuel for growth in a thriving subterranean world.
