Chinese researchers have recently challenged the long-held belief that “all life depends on sunlight.” In a study published in Science Advances, the researchers identified how microbes in deep subsurface areas can derive energy from chemical reactions driven by crustal faulting, offering critical insights into life deep below Earth’s surface. The research was led by Prof. Hongping…
In medicine and biotechnology, the ability to evolve proteins with new or improved functions is crucial, but current methods are often slow and laborious. Now, Scripps Research scientists have developed a synthetic biology platform that accelerates evolution itself — enabling researchers to evolve proteins with useful, new properties thousands of times faster than nature. The…
Tim Dodd Climate and science reporter Adam Gor/Butterfly Conservation The Southern Small White has been gradually making its way across Europe A species of butterfly previously only found in Southern Europe has been seen in the UK for the first time, according to charity Butterfly Conservation. Experts have tracked the Southern Small White butterfly’s rapid…
Scientists have identified an ultramassive black hole billions of light years away IgorZh/Shutterstock A gargantuan black hole hiding in a galaxy 5 billion light years away is the most massive that has been directly measured, more than 10,000 times as massive as the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and around…
Using one of the most detailed sets of observations ever of a galaxy cluster 700 million light-years from Earth, astronomers have captured the faint glow of stray stars in the process of being ripped from their home galaxy and absorbed into another. The ‘bridge’ of diffuse light — spanning roughly a million light years between…
Researchers have for the first time isolated a compound that could open new doors in understanding the chemistry that supports life in space. Ryan Fortenberry, an astrochemist at the University of Mississippi, Ralf Kaiser, professor of chemistry at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, and Alexander M. Mebel, computational chemist at Florida International University, are…
Anna Meisel BBC File on 4 Investigates Getty Images The UK generates about 50 million waste tyres every year The Environment Agency said it is introducing enhanced checks on the export of tyres from the UK after the BBC revealed millions were being sent to furnaces instead of being recycled in India. A report by…
Cuts of $500 million to vaccines research have been announced by the US government. Source link
An illustration of a spaceship sailing close to a black hole liuzishan/Getty Images An interstellar probe sent to a black hole could complete its journey and send data back to Earth in less than a century – if we can find a black hole close enough. Cosimo Bambi at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, has developed…
A world-first study led by Museums Victoria Research Institute has revealed that beneath the cold, dark, pressurized world of the deep sea, marine life is far more globally connected than previously imagined. Published on July 23 in Nature, this landmark study maps the global distribution and evolutionary relationships of brittle stars (Ophiuroidea), the ancient, spiny animals…
