Secret fresh water under the ocean

 Scientists tap "secret fresh water" known to exist in shallow salt waters

Deep in Earth’s past, an icy landscape became a seascape as the ice melted and the oceans rose off what is now the northeastern US. Nearly 50 years ago, a US government ship searching for minerals and hydrocarbons in the area drilled into the seafloor to see what it could find. It found, of all things, drops to drink under the briny deeps, fresh water. This summer, a first-of-its-kind global research expedition followed up on that surprise. Drilling for fresh water under the salt water off Cape Cod extracted thousands of samples from what is now thought to be a massive, hidden aquifer stretching from New Jersey as far north as Maine. It's just one of many depositories of "secret fresh water" known to exist in shallow salt waters around the world which might some day be tapped to slake the planet's intensifying thirst, said Brandon Dugan, the expedition's co-chief scientist. "We need to look for every possibility we have to find more water for society," Dugan, a geophysicist and hydrologist at the Colorado School of Mines, said who recently spent 12 hours on the drilling platform. The research teams looked in "one of the last places you would probably look for fresh water on Earth." They found it, and will be analysing nearly 50,000 litres (13,209 gallons) of it back in their labs around the world in the coming months. They're out to solve the mystery of its origins, whether the water is from glaciers, connected groundwater systems on land or some combination. The potential is enormous. So are the hurdles of getting the water out and puzzling over who owns it, who uses it and how to extract it without undue harm to nature. It's bound to take years to bring that water ashore for public use in a big way, if it's even feasible.

The work at sea unfolded over three months from Liftboat Robert, an oceangoing vessel that, once on site, lowers three enormous pillars to the seafloor and squats above the waves. Normally it services offshore petroleum sites and wind farms. But this drill mission was different. "It's known that this phenomena exists both here and elsewhere around the world," Expedition 501 project manager Jez Everest, a scientist who came from the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Scotland, said of undersea water. "But it's a subject that's never been directly investigated by any research project in the past." By that, he means no one globally had drilled systematically into the seabed on a mission to find freshwater. Expedition 501 was quite literally ground breaking, it penetrated Earth below the sea by as many as 1,289 feet or nearly 400 meters. But it followed a 2015 research project which mapped contours of an aquifer remotely, using electromagnetic technology and roughly estimated salinity of the water underneath. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, reported evidence of a "massive offshore aquifer system" in this area, possibly rivalling the size of America's largest, the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies water to parts of eight Great Plains states. Two developments in 1976 had stirred interest in searching for undersea freshwater. In the middle of Nantucket island, the US Geological Survey drilled a test well to see how far down the groundwater went. It extracted fresh water from such great depths which made scientists wonder if the water came from the sea, not the sky.

The federal agency mounted a 60-day expedition aboard the drilling vessel Glomar Conception along a vast stretch of the Continental Shelf from Georgia to Georges Bank off New England. It drilled cores in search of the sub-seabed's resources, like methane. It found an eye-opening amount of fresh or freshened water in borehole after borehole. That set the stage for the water-seekers to do their work a half-century later. Soon after Robert arrived at the first of three drilling sites, samples drawn from below the seabed registered salinity of just 4 parts per thousand. That's far below the oceans' average salt content of 35 parts per thousand but still too briny to meet the US freshwater standard of under 1 part per thousand. "Four parts per thousand was a eureka moment," Dugan said, because the finding suggested that the water must have been connected to a terrestrial system in the past, or still is. As the weeks wore on and Robert moved from site to site 20 to 30 miles (30 to 50 km's) off the coast, the process of drilling into the waterlogged subsea sediment yielded a collection of samples down to 1 part per thousand salt content. Some were even lower.

In months of analysis ahead, the scientists will investigate a range of properties of the water, including what microbes were living in the depths, what they used for nutrients and energy sources and what by products they might generate; in other words, whether the water is safe to consume or otherwise use. "This is a new environment that has never been studied before," said Jocelyne DiRuggiero, a Johns Hopkins University biologist in Baltimore who studies the microbial ecology of extreme environments and is not involved in the expedition. "The water may contain minerals detrimental to human health since it percolated through layers of sediments," she said. "However, a similar process forms the terrestrial aquifers that we use for freshwater, and those typically have very high quality." By sequencing DNA extracted from their samples, she said, the researchers can determine which microorganisms are there and "learn how they potentially make a living."

In just five years, the UN says, the global demand for fresh water will exceed supplies by 40%. Rising sea levels from the warming climate are souring coastal freshwater sources while data centres which power AI and cloud computing are consuming water at an insatiable rate. The fabled Ancient Mariner's lament, "Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink," looms as a warning to landlubbers as well as to sailors on salty seas. Cape Town, South Africa, came perilously close to running out of fresh water for its nearly 5 million people in 2018 during an epic, three-year drought. South Africa is thought to have a coastal undersea freshwater bonanza, too, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that every continent may have the same. In Virginia alone, a quarter of all power produced in the state goes to data centres, a share expected to nearly double in five years. By some estimates, each midsize data centre consumes as much water as 1,000 households. Each of the Great Lakes states has experienced groundwater shortages. Canada's Prince Edward Island, Hawaii and Jakarta, Indonesia are among places where stressed freshwater supplies coexist with prospective aquifers under the ocean. Try Expedition, a $25 million scientific collaboration of more than a dozen countries backed by the US government's National Science Foundation and the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling. Scientists went into the project believing the undersea aquifer they were sampling might be sufficient to meet the needs of a metropolis the size of New York City for 800 years. They found fresh or nearly fresh water at both higher and lower depths below the seafloor than they anticipated, suggesting a larger supply even than that.

Techniques will also be used to determine whether it came from glacial ice melt thousands of years ago or is still coming via labyrinthian geologic formations from land. Researchers will date the water back in the lab, and that will be key in determining whether it is a renewable resource which could be used responsibly. Primordial water is trapped and finite; newer water suggests the aquifer is still connected to a terrestrial source and being refreshed, however slowly. "Younger means it was a raindrop 100 years ago, 200 years ago," Dugan said. "If young, it's recharging." Those questions are for basic science. For society, all sorts of complex questions arise if the basic science affirms the conditions necessary for exploiting the water. Who will manage it? Can it be taken without an unacceptable risk of contaminating the supply from the ocean above? Will it be cheaper or environmentally friendlier than today's energy-hungry desalination plants? Dugan said if governments decide to get the water, local communities could turn to the aquifers in time of need, such as drought, or when extreme storms flood coastal freshwater reserves and ruin them. The notion of actually using this old buried water is so new that it has not been on the radar of many policymakers or conservationists.

"It's a lesson in how long it can take sometimes to make these things happen and the perseverance that's needed to get there," said Woods Hole geophysicist Rob Evans, whose 2015 expedition helped point the way for 501. "There's a ton of excitement that finally they've got samples." Still, he sees some red flags. One is that tapping undersea aquifers could draw water away from onshore reserves. Another is that undersea groundwater which seeps out to the seafloor may supply nutrients vital to the ecosystem, and that might not be right. "If we were to go out and start pumping these waters, there would almost certainly be unforeseen consequences," he said. "There's a lot of balance we would need to consider before we started diving in and drilling and exploiting these kinds of things." For most in the project, getting to and from Liftboat Robert meant a voyage of seven hours or more from Fall River, Massachusetts, on a supply boat that made round trips every 10 days or so to replenish stocks and rotate people.

On the platform, around the clock, the racket of metal bore pipes and machinery, the drilling grime and the speckled mud mingled with the quieter, cleaner work of scientists in trailers converted to pristine labs and processing posts. There, samples were treated according to the varying needs of the expedition's geologists, geochemists, hydrologists, microbiologists, sedimentologists and more. Passing through clear plastic tubes, muck was sliced into disks like hockey pucks. Machines squeezed water out. Some samples were kept sealed to enable study of ancient gases dissolved in the water. Other samples were frozen, filtered or left as is, depending on the purpose. After six months of lab analysis, all the science teams of Expedition 501 will meet again, this time in Germany for a month of collaborative research that is expected to produce initial findings that point to the age and origin of the water.

Ocean lifeline vanishes due to climate disruption

 Climate disruption effects Panama’s ocean lifeline for first time in 40 years

Scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute warned that the upwelling, which makes the waters of the Gulf of Panama colder and richer in nutrients every summer, did not occur in 2025 for the first time in at least 40 years. Upwelling events in the Gulf of Panama primarily occur during Central America’s dry season (December to April) due to the northern trade winds. Every year, Panama’s Pacific coast benefits from powerful seasonal winds that drive nutrient-rich waters to the surface, sustaining fisheries and protecting coral reefs. But for the first time in at least four decades, this crucial upwelling did not occur. Scientists suspect weakened trade winds linked to climate disruption played a role, leaving cooler waters absent and fisheries under stress. Upwelling events support highly productive fisheries and help protect coral reefs from thermal stress. 

During the dry season in Central America (generally between December and April), northern trade winds generate upwelling events in the ocean waters of the Gulf of Panama. Upwelling is a process that allows cold, nutrient-rich waters from the depths of the ocean to rise to the surface. Thanks to this movement of water, the sea along Panama's Pacific beaches remains cooler during the "summer" vacation season. This dynamic supports highly productive fisheries and helps protect coral reefs from thermal stress. STRI scientists have studied this phenomenon, and their records indicate that the seasonal upwelling had been a constant and predictable feature of the Gulf for at least 40 years; however, in 2025, it “did not occur for the first time.” Consequently, the temperature decrease and increased productivity typical of this time of year were reduced. Scientists suggest that a significant reduction in wind patterns caused this unprecedented event.

Scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) says that this seasonal upwelling, which occurs from January to April, has been a consistent and predictable feature of the gulf. However, researchers recently recorded that in 2025, this vital oceanographic process did not occur for the first time. As a result, the typical drops in temperature and spikes in productivity during this time of year were diminished. Scientists suggest that a significant reduction in wind patterns was the cause of this unprecedented event. Still, further research is needed to determine a more precise cause and its potential consequences for fisheries. This situation reveals “how climate disruption can quickly alter fundamental oceanic processes that have sustained coastal fishing communities for thousands of years.” The STRI also argues that this finding highlights the growing vulnerability of tropical upwelling systems, which, despite their enormous ecological and socioeconomic importance, remain sparsely monitored.

This finding highlights the growing vulnerability of tropical upwelling systems, which, despite their enormous ecological and socioeconomic importance, remain poorly monitored. It also underscores the urgency of strengthening ocean-climate observation and prediction capabilities in the planet's tropical regions. This result marks one of the first major outcomes of the collaboration between the S/Y Eugen Seibold research vessel from the Max Planck Institute and STRI. The STRI, based in Panama, is a unit of the Smithsonian Institution which promotes understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human well-being. It also trains students to conduct tropical research and fosters conservation by raising public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems. 

Nuclear Battery which might last for 433 Years

 NASA’s most ambitious Power source, a Nuclear Battery which could last 433 Years  

What if a space probe could run for over 400 years? NASA’s new nuclear battery might make that possible. Spacecraft have used a plutonium isotope to stay afloat for decades, but another isotope could last even longer. Radioisotope power systems (RPS) keep spacecraft going with nuclear batteries. Until now, RPS operated using a plutonium isotope, but researchers have found that an isotope of americium could keep spacecraft engines going even longer. A collaborative effort between NASA and the University of Leicester is now developing batteries with this isotope for future missions. Space, at least as far as we can fathom, is infinite. Rocket fuel is finite. While we haven’t yet found a way of keeping spacecraft from sputtering to a halt light-years away from Earth, NASA has the next best thing, and it’s radioactive.

The goal of NASA and the University of Leicester are to develop a new nuclear battery powered by americium-241, a radioactive isotope capable of fuelling space probes for 433 years. The research was recently featured and it could mark a major turning point in how we think about long-duration space missions. NASA has been using radioisotope power systems (RPS) which involve nuclear batteries since the early 1960s to power missions including both Voyagers, New Horizons, Curiosity, and, most recently, Perseverance. (The Dragonfly quadcopter meant to explore the methane lakes and seas of Saturn’s moon Titan will also rely on RPS.) Radioisotopes are unstable forms of elements which can only regain stability by degrading, and it is the breakdown of radioisotopes which generates heat and keeps the battery going. While that might sound futuristic enough, NASA is intending to level it up. The space agency has used plutonium-238, or plutonium oxide, as fuel for decades. The half-life of this isotope, how long it takes for an isotope’s radioactivity to drop to half its original level, is nearly 88 years. Now, however, the isotope americium-241 is being eyed for upcoming missions. With a half-life of almost 433 years, it lasts centuries longer than plutonium-238, and could keep spacecraft venturing far further into the unknown.

Radioisotopes need to meet NASA’s strict criteria to qualify for missions. For one, whatever form they take needs to be nontoxic (or minimally toxic) to the body, and they need to be insoluble so they are not easily absorbed by the body. As such, the fuel is usually in ceramic form, so instead of vaporizing and potentially being breathed in, they break into large fragments which cannot be absorbed even if ingested. For another, spacecraft instruments also need to be kept safe, so any radioisotopes used in a battery must have a sufficiently long half-life, remain stable at high temperatures, and only need a small amount to generate a blast of heat. This allows them to keep obiters, rovers and space telescopes going for decades. Radioisotope power systems (RPS) generate electricity from the heat released by radioactive decay, and they’re a big reason missions like Voyager, New Horizons, Curiosity, and Perseverance have lasted so long. Until now, these batteries relied on plutonium-238, which breaks down steadily over time but can only power missions for a few decades at best. Americium-241 changes that. With a half-life of 433 years, it keeps producing heat for centuries. This opens the door to truly long-term missions, ones that could outlast not just the spacecraft’s designers but entire generations of scientists. And yes, NASA has strict safety standards for anything radioactive. Americium-241 passes the test. It’s “minimally toxic,” and when used in ceramic form, it won’t vaporize. If something goes wrong, it breaks into large, chunky pieces, meaning it’s a lot less likely to be inhaled or absorbed into the body. 

Until now, only plutonium-238 has been able to pass. But this past January, NASA’s Glenn Research Centre (Glenn) and the University of Leicester in the UK joined forces and agreed to test-drive americium-241. They are also looking into using an optimal method of generating electricity from this radioactive fuel, instead of a system that can only power up a spacecraft using a crankshaft, a free-piston Stirling convertor allows pistons to float within the engine in microgravity (NASA has been using them for years). In 2020, a convertor at NASA’s Glenn Research Centre which was running on RPS reached 14 years of maintenance-free operation, which just so happens to be the minimum life needed for many deep space missions. Wayne Wong, head of Glenn’s Thermal Energy Conversion Branch, described the progress as “particularly significant” for missions which have long cruise times and can’t afford any downtime. “Previous flight projects determined that the mission duration requirement for RPS is 14 years, particularly for outer planetary missions with long cruise times.” Plutonium-238 had been on a 30-year production hiatus before 2011, when NASA received government funding to support the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy to restart production for space missions. The isotope is currently produced at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and several other facilities. The production process for americium-241 is currently undergoing improvements for efficiency and safety at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

One of the challenges with plutonium-238 is that it’s expensive and slow to make. In contrast, americium-241 is much easier to get. It’s a common by-product of nuclear reactors, so there’s already a decent supply. Right now, Los Alamos National Laboratory is working on improving the production process, making it safer and more efficient for long-term use in space. There are some challenges. Americium-241 emits more gamma radiation than plutonium, which means better shielding will be needed. But engineers seem confident that’s a solvable problem, especially considering how much longer this fuel can last. This tech isn’t just about extending mission timelines. It’s about changing how we think about space travel entirely. A probe launched in 2050 could, in theory, still be functioning in the year 2480. That’s not science fiction anymore, it’s a real possibility. Missions like Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered drone heading to Saturn’s moon Titan, are already banking on long-lasting battery tech. If americium-241 proves viable, it could fuel the next generation of deep space explorers, ones designed to operate for hundreds of years without stopping. Meanwhile, the Voyagers keep heading further and further from the Solar System, still powered by RPS, leading the way for missions to come. And as the Voyager spacecraft powered by the fading warmth of old-school RPS, NASA’s new battery tech is getting ready to take over, lighting the path for everything that comes next in world around us. 

Oort clouds and Voyager-1

NASA spacecraft will soon reach a full light-day from Earth and now heading towards Oort clouds       

NASA’s Voyager spacecraft is on the verge of making history by becoming the first human-made object to travel a full light-day away from Earth—a distance so vast that light itself takes 24 hours to cover it. This awe-inspiring milestone, set for Nov 2026, reminds us just how colossal the universe truly is and how tiny our fastest spacecraft seem in comparison. Voyager-1 is currently over 162 AU from Earth, already in interstellar space. But it’s still nowhere near the Oort Cloud, at its speed, it will take about 300 years just to reach the inner edge. Launched back in 1977, Voyager 1 has journeyed nearly 16 billion miles from Earth and is still sending signals home as it ventures further into the vastness of space. Crossing the light-day mark is not just about numbers, it’s a tribute to human curiosity, endurance and our desire to reach beyond what was once thought possible.

On 15 Nov, 2026, Voyager will be 16 billion miles from Earth, matching the distance light travels in a day. By 28 Jan, 2027, it will also reach that same light-day mark from the Sun. This isn’t just a cold statistic but a testament to how far human ingenuity and ambition can stretch. It’s inspiring to think that a tiny probe launched before the personal computer era has kept moving forward into the unknown, carrying priceless data and digital greetings into deep space. Voyager 1 is much more than an old spacecraft; it is a trailblazer which first crossed the heliopause, marking the boundary where the solar wind from our Sun gives way to the mysterious realm of interstellar space. Moving at roughly 38,000 miles per hour, it has steadily travelled outward for decades. Yet, despite its incredible speed, radio signals from Voyager take nearly 24 hours to make the trip back to Earth. This journey serves as a vivid reminder of just how enormous space is and how each step beyond our solar system opens new windows into the universe’s vast mysteries. The Oort Cloud is a giant spherical shell of icy objects that surrounds our solar system, believed to be the birthplace of long-period comets. It stretches from about 2,000 AU (astronomical units) to possibly 100,000 AU from the Sun.

These numbers highlight the staggering challenge of space travel beyond our own backyard. While light can cross these distances in just minutes, our best technology takes years or even decades. The fact that Voyager 1 has spent nearly 50 years journeying the equivalent of one light-day inspires a deep respect for the patience and persistence required to explore space. Scientists think the Oort Cloud contains billions of frozen remnants from the early solar system. Studying it could reveal how planets and comets formed, making it a cosmic time capsule. Since ancient times, humans have dreamed of reaching the stars faster than ever before. The fastest spacecraft built by humans, Apollo 10, reached almost 25,000 miles per hour in 1969, a speed still unmatched. But even a spacecraft traveling at that pace would take more than five months just to cover the 93 million miles from Earth to the Sun.  Voyager 1 long mission is amazing, a small robotic explorer could keep sending faint signals from such a mind-boggling distance. It’s a powerful symbol of endurance and human curiosity that still resonates today, reminding us to keep reaching higher.

Voyager-1, launched in 1977, is currently over 162 AU from Earth, already in interstellar space. But it’s still nowhere near the Oort Cloud, at its speed, it will take about 300 years just to reach the inner edge. As Voyager 1 continues its never-ending voyage, it brings up one of the biggest questions in astronomy: where does our solar system actually end? Scientists have debated this for years. Is it where the planets stop? Perhaps it’s the distant, cloud-like region called the Oort cloud, filled with icy bodies tugged by the Sun’s gravity. Or maybe it’s even farther, where the Sun’s gravitational pull fades away, halfway to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star neighbour. Will Voyager-1 actually reach the Oort Cloud? Technically, yes. Its trajectory is pointed outward. But by the time it gets there, its instruments and power will be long dead (expected to shut down by 2030). It will silently drift through.

NASA explains that this boundary isn’t a crisp line but an enormous, fuzzy region. Even at its blistering pace, Voyager would need nearly 40,000 years to reach this outer gravitational edge, which lies about two light-years away. Crossing the full Oort Cloud would take Voyager-1 tens of thousands of years. To reach the far edge could wander through the cloud long after humanity has changed beyond recognition. Contemplating this scale made us realize the universe’s true vastness in a whole new way. Every discovery, every spacecraft like Voyager which pushes beyond known frontiers, gradually unveils more of the cosmos’ secrets. Although it will take many lifetimes before humans get close to these far-flung edges, missions like Voyager blaze a trail for tomorrow’s explorers. Voyager-1 could one day pass close to icy objects in the Oort Cloud, but it won’t be able to send back data. To us, it’ll simply become a silent relic of Earth drifting among ancient cosmic icebergs. So, if you could send a message to Voyager 1 today, what would it be? Do you believe humans will ever travel faster than light? Or will the giant gulf between stars always keep us grounded? Even though Voyager-1 won’t be alive to study the Oort Cloud, its journey reminds us how vast our solar system is. It’s a symbol of human curiosity, a message in a bottle traveling toward one of the most mysterious regions of space.

Earth's rotation is slowing down

 Earth’s rotation is slowing and it could be why we have oxygen for life       

Ever since its formation around 4.5 billion years ago, Earth's rotation has been gradually slowing down, and its days have gotten progressively longer as a result. While Earth's slowdown is not noticeable on human timescales, it's enough to work significant changes over eons. One of those changes is perhaps the most significant of all, at least to us: lengthening days are linked to the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere, according to a study earlier. Specifically, the blue-green algae (or cyanobacteria) which emerged and proliferated about 2.4 billion years ago would have been able to produce more oxygen as a metabolic by-product because Earth's days grew longer. Imagine a time when a full day on Earth lasted just 18 hours, a world where nightfall came racing faster than today’s steady 24-hour rhythm. Over billions of years, our planet’s spin has been gradually slowing down, and this subtle cosmic shift might actually explain why the air we breathe today is rich in oxygen. It’s not just an interesting quirk of physics, the lengthening of Earth’s days could have played a vital role in shaping life itself. Recent research reveals a fascinating connection between the slowdown of Earth’s rotation and the rise of breathable oxygen, showing how even the smallest changes in our planet’s spin influenced the evolution of life on a grand scale.

When Earth first formed nearly 4.5 billion years ago, it spun much faster than it does now. Thanks to the Moon’s gravitational tug, our planet has been gradually losing speed, stretching those youthful 18-hour days to the 24-hour day we know today. This happens because the Moon’s gravity pulls on Earth’s oceans, creating tides, a process that works like a subtle brake, adding about 2 milliseconds to the length of each day every century. "An enduring question in Earth sciences has been how did Earth's atmosphere get its oxygen, and what factors controlled when this oxygenation took place," microbiologist Gregory Dick of the University of Michigan explained. "Our research suggests that the rate at which Earth is spinning, in other words, its day length, may have had an important effect on the pattern and timing of Earth's oxygenation." There are two major components, at first glance, don't seem to have a lot to do with each other. The first is that Earth's spin is slowing down. The reason Earth's spin is slowing down is because the Moon exerts a gravitational pull on the planet, which causes a rotational deceleration since the Moon is gradually pulling away. We know, based on the fossil record, that days were just 18 hours long 1.4 billion years ago, and half an hour shorter than they are today 70 million years ago. Evidence suggests that we're gaining 1.8 milliseconds a century. The second component is something known as the Great Oxidation Event, when cyanobacteria emerged in such great quantities that Earth's atmosphere experienced a sharp, significant rise in oxygen. Without this oxidation, scientists think life as we know it could not have emerged; so, although cyanobacteria may cop a bit of side-eye today, we probably wouldn't be here without them.

You might wonder how this tiny change impacts something as essential as oxygen. The answer lies in the ancient microbes called cyanobacteria, tiny blue-green algae which first began turning sunlight into oxygen through photosynthesis approximately 2.4 billion years ago. This monumental event, known as the Great Oxidation Event, dramatically increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere and paved the way for complex life. Cyanobacteria depend heavily on sunlight to produce oxygen. When days were shorter, their window for oxygen production was limited. As the Earth’s days grew longer, these microbes had more time to soak up the sun and pump out oxygen, slowly but steadily enriching the atmosphere. There's still a lot we don't know about this event, including such burning questions as why it happened when it did and not sometime earlier in Earth's history. It took scientists working with cyanobacterial microbes to connect the dots. Scientists have found a modern-day reflection of ancient Earth’s microbial world beneath Lake Huron, at the Middle Island Sinkhole. Here, purple cyanobacteria, oxygen producers, compete with white sulfur-consuming microbes in microbial mats. These communities shift their dominance between day and night, revealing the delicate balance which influenced early oxygen dynamics. In the early morning, sulfur-eating microbes top the mats, feeding vigorously. As sunlight intensifies, the purple cyanobacteria take over, starting their photosynthetic oxygen production. But there’s a catch, the cyanobacteria don’t immediately jump into action. They need a few hours to “wake up” and reach their full oxygen-producing potential. This delay means shorter days limit how much oxygen they can release.

Oceanographer Brian Arbic and his team were intrigued by the question: Would the gradual lengthening of Earth’s days allow cyanobacteria to maximize oxygen production? By combining field studies, lab experiments, and computer modeling, they confirmed that longer, uninterrupted periods of sunlight let these microbes work more efficiently. Interestingly, two quick 12-hour days don’t equal one long 24-hour day in oxygen output. The reason is molecular diffusion, a slow process that governs how oxygen leaves microbial cells. When daylight cycles switch too fast, oxygen can’t diffuse away efficiently—prolonged sunlight lets microbes release oxygen steadily and more abundantly. Purple cyanobacteria that produce oxygen via photosynthesis and white microbes which metabolize sulfur, compete in a microbial mat on the lakebed. At night, the white microbes rise to the top of the microbial mat and do their sulfur-munching thing. When day breaks, and the Sun rises high enough in the sky, the white microbes retreat and the purple cyanobacteria rise to the top. "Now they can start to photosynthesize and produce oxygen," said geomicrobiologist Judith Klatt of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany.

This research didn’t only connect Earth’s spin slowdown to the first oxygen surge billions of years ago. It also linked the lengthening of days to a second oxygen rise during the Neoproterozoic era, between about 550 and 800 million years ago. This second burst of oxygen coincided with the emergence of multicellular life, making the slow deceleration of Earth’s spin a key factor in shaping the conditions which allowed diverse and complex life forms to flourish. What this means is truly profound: the gradual increase in day length wasn’t just a matter of timekeeping. It fundamentally influenced the composition of Earth’s atmosphere and the development of life as we know it. Our very breath, rich in oxygen, owes something to the long, slow drag of the Moon’s gravity. This means the window of daytime in which the cyanobacteria can pump out oxygen is very limited, and it was this fact that caught the attention of oceanographer Brian Arbic of the University of Michigan. He wondered if changing day length over Earth's history had had an impact on photosynthesis. "It's possible that a similar type of competition between microbes contributed to the delay in oxygen production on the early Earth," Klatt explained. Reflecting personally, it’s amazing to realize how minute changes, like milliseconds added to a day every century, can lead to monumental shifts over time. It reminds us that the small, steady choices we make daily can quietly shape our lives in ways we don’t always notice right away. Just as Earth’s rotation nudges life toward complexity, our habits nudge us toward growth.

To demonstrate this hypothesis, the team performed experiments and measurements on the microbes, both in their natural environment and a laboratory setting. They also performed detailed modelling studies based on their results to link sunlight to microbial oxygen production, and microbial oxygen production to Earth's history. "Intuition suggests that two 12-hour days should be similar to one 24-hour day. The sunlight rises and falls twice as fast, and the oxygen production follows in lockstep," explained marine scientist Arjun Chennu of the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research in Germany. "But the release of oxygen from bacterial mats does not, because it is limited by the speed of molecular diffusion. This subtle uncoupling of oxygen release from sunlight is at the heart of the mechanism." This intimate link between Earth’s rotation and atmospheric oxygen highlights the incredible interconnectedness of cosmic forces with life’s evolution. It’s a vivid example of how planetary mechanics ripple through biological systems to create the world we inhabit. It also sparks a deeper question: Had Earth’s rotation stayed fast with shorter days, would oxygen have risen enough to support the spectacular variety of life we see today? Or might our planet have remained a simpler, less hospitable place? By understanding this delicate balance between day length and oxygen production, we gain new appreciation for how finely tuned the conditions for life really are. 

These results were incorporated into global models of oxygen levels, and the team found that lengthening days were linked to the increase in Earth's oxygen, not just the Great Oxidation Event, but another, second atmospheric oxygenation called the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event around 550 to 800 million years ago. "We tie together laws of physics operating at vastly different scales, from molecular diffusion to planetary mechanics. We show that there is a fundamental link between day length and how much oxygen can be released by ground-dwelling microbes," Chennu said. "It's pretty exciting. This way we link the dance of the molecules in the microbial mat to the dance of our planet and its Moon."

Earth's seasons observed from space

 Earth's seasons aren't the same everywhere, Scientists discover from space

The annual clock of the seasons, winter, spring, summer, autumn, is often taken as a given. But our new study in Nature, using a new approach for observing seasonal growth cycles from satellites, shows that this notion is far too simple. A new study about Nature reveals that Earth's seasons don't actually line up the same everywhere. By looking at 20 years of satellite data, researchers found big differences in when plants grow, even between places which are pretty close together. So, the idea of what everyone shares the same spring or fall? Not really true. We present an unprecedented and intimate portrait of the seasonal cycles of Earth's land-based ecosystems. This reveals "hotspots" of seasonal asynchrony around the world, regions where the timing of seasonal cycles can be out of sync between nearby locations. We then show these differences in timing can have surprising ecological, evolutionary, and even economic consequences.

By applying a new analysis to 20 years of satellite imagery, we made a better map of the timing of plant growth cycles around the globe. Alongside expected patterns, such as delayed spring at higher latitudes and altitudes, we saw more surprising ones too. Average seasonal cycles of plant growth around the world. Each pattern varies from its minimum (tan) to its maximum (dark green) throughout the year. One surprising pattern happens across Earth's five Mediterranean climate regions, where winters are mild and wet and summers are hot and dry. These include California, Chile, South Africa, southern Australia and the Mediterranean itself. These regions all share a "double peak" seasonal pattern, previously documented in California, because forest growth cycles tend to peak roughly two months later than other ecosystems. They also show stark differences in the timing of plant growth from their neighbouring dry lands, where summer precipitation is more common.

The seasons set the rhythm of life. Living things, including humans, adjust the timing of their annual activities to exploit resources and conditions which fluctuate through the year. The study of this timing, known as "phenology", is an age-old form of human observation of nature. But today, we can also watch phenology from space. The average seasonal growth cycles of Earth's land-based ecosystems, estimated from 20 years of satellite imagery gives a different results. With decades-long archives of satellite imagery, we can use computing to better understand seasonal cycles of plant growth. However, methods for doing this are often based on the assumption of simple seasonal cycles and distinct growing seasons. This works well in much of Europe, North America and other high-latitude places with strong winters. However, this method can struggle in the tropics and in arid regions. Satellite-based estimates of plant growth can vary subtly throughout the year here, without clear-cut growing seasons.

The biggest "out-of-sync" hotspots showed up in Mediterranean climates and tropical mountains, think California, Chile, South Africa or the Mediterranean itself. These timing gaps can shape which species thrive by changing how plants reproduce and spread genes. This even matches up with the complex geography of Colombia's coffee harvests, where nearby farms can have out-of-sync cycles. This complex mix of seasonal activity patterns explains one major finding of this work: the Mediterranean climates and their neighbouring dry lands are hotspots of out-of-sync seasonal activity. In other words, they are regions where the seasonal cycles of nearby places can have dramatically different timing. Consider, for example, the marked difference between Phoenix, Arizona (which has similar amounts of winter and summer rainfall) and Tucson only 160 km away (where most rainfall comes from the summer monsoon). Other global hotspots occur mostly in tropical mountains. The intricate patterns of out-of-sync seasons we observe there may relate to the complex ways in which mountains can influence airflow, dictating local patterns of seasonal rainfall and cloud. These phenomena are still poorly understood, but may be fundamental to the distribution of species in these regions of exceptional biodiversity.

Scientists tracked "phenology" basically, when plants and animals do their seasonal things, using global satellite imagery. Older methods mostly worked for places with clear-cut winters and summers but missed all the weird timing in tropical and dry regions. This study created the most detailed map yet of how seasonal events play out around the world. Identifying global regions where seasonal patterns are out of sync was the original motivation of the work. And final finding overlap with many of Earth's biodiversity hotspots, places with large numbers of plant and animal species, may not be a coincidence. In these regions, because seasonal cycles of plant growth can be out of sync between nearby places, the seasonal availability of resources may be out of sync, too. This would affect the seasonal reproductive cycles of many species, and the ecological and evolutionary consequences could be profound. One such consequence is that populations with out-of-sync reproductive cycles would be less likely to interbreed. As a result, these populations would be expected to diverge genetically, and perhaps eventually even split into different species. If this happened to even a small percentage of species at any given time, then over the long haul these regions would produce large amounts of biodiversity.

For a wide range of plant and animal species, satellite-based map predicts stark on-ground differences in the timing of plant flowering and in genetic relatedness between nearby populations. Understanding seasonal patterns in space and time isn't just important for evolutionary biology. It is also fundamental to understanding the ecology of animal movement, the consequences of climate change for species and ecosystems, and even the geography of agriculture and other forms of human activity around the world.

Giant planet discovered

  124 light-years away from Earth, giant planet discovered 

Astronomers report the detection of a new Jupiter-like exoplanet using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS). The newfound alien world orbits a nearby M-dwarf star designated GJ 2126. A nearby star has a new heavyweight companion, and it swings around on a path which is anything but neat. The world, labelled GJ 2126 b, traces a stretched orbit which pushes close to its star, then races far away again. Researchers identified a giant world 124 light years away that circles its star every 272.7 days on a highly stretched path, eccentricity equals 0.85. In addition, it has a minimum mass of about 1.3 Jupiter masses at roughly 0.71 astronomical units, about 66 million miles, from its star. These values come from 112 radial velocity measurements with the HARPS spectrograph. “This planet orbits a low-mass star and ranks among the most eccentric exoplanets discovered,” wrote Arbel Schorr from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University (TAU) who led the study. 

The radial velocity (RV) method of detecting an exoplanet is based on the detection of variations in the velocity of the central star, due to the changing direction of the gravitational pull from an unseen exoplanet as it orbits the star. Thanks to this technique, more than 600 exoplanets have been detected so far. HARPS is a high-resolution visible-light echelle spectrograph installed at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) 3.6-m telescope in Chile. Thanks to its radial-velocity accuracy of about 1 m/s, it is one of the most successful planet finders in history. Most planets in our own neighbourhood move on nearly round routes, so an orbit this stretched stands out. High eccentricity often points to a chaotic past shaped by strong gravitational run-ins. A path like this can reshape a planet’s temperature and atmospheric behaviour across a single year. The extremes also make modeller's revisit how giant planets form and later get knocked around.

"We report the discovery of GJ 2126 b, a highly eccentric (e = 0.85) Jupiter-like planet orbiting its host star every 272.7 days. The planet was detected and characterized using 112 RV measurements from HARPS, provided by HARPS-RVBank," the researchers wrote. The team used HARPS which maintains about 1 meter per second velocity stability. The level of steadiness lets astronomers watch a star’s tiny wobble over many years. They mined the publicly curated HARPS-RVBank, which compiles 252,615 velocities for 5,239 stars observed before January 2022. Public datasets like this let independent teams test ideas and spot signals which earlier searches may have missed. With a semi-major axis of 0.71 AU and eccentricity of 0.85, periastron, the closest approach, sits near 0.11 AU, about 9.9 million miles. The farthest point stretches to roughly 1.31 AU, about 122 million miles. Those swings mean large changes in stellar heating across a single 272.7 day year. Timing, chemistry, and cloud formation likely shift dramatically between close pass and far turn.

The inclination of GJ 2126 b is unknown, its mass could be much greater and the possibility that this object may be a brown dwarf cannot be completely excluded. The host star, often listed as an M-dwarf of type M0V, is a cool, low-mass object with about 0.65 times the Sun’s mass and 0.73 times its radius. Its temperature sits near 4,159 kelvin and its metal content is high for a dwarf star. GJ 2126 is a high proper-motion star about 124 light years from Earth. Its brightness and proximity make follow-up work practical with existing instruments. Because the orbital tilt is unknown, the mass estimate is a lower limit. The team considered whether the companion might cross into brown dwarf territory if the orbit is nearly face-on. They argue that Gaia astrometry and the absence of long-term trends disfavor a very massive companion around this star. The paper reports a renormalized astrometric error near unity, a value not expected for a heavy hidden object. The researchers compared different ways to search for periodicity in uneven time series. They leaned on the Phase Distance Correlation periodogram, designed to handle non-sinusoidal signals like those from eccentric orbits. They also considered a known trap in velocity work, where two planets in a 2:1 resonance can masquerade as one eccentric planet. Their modelling rejected such alternatives for this dataset.

Astronomers underline that GJ 2126 b is one of the most eccentric exoplanets discovered around an M-dwarf. They added that the unique properties of GJ 2126 b place it in a relatively sparse region of the detected exoplanet population. Therefore, its further observations could help better understand planetary formation and evolution scenarios. Cool stars frequently show magnetic activity that adds noise to velocity data. Teams monitor spectral activity indicators to avoid mistaking star spots for planets and to validate true orbits. In this case, the auxiliary indicators did not line up with the 272.7 day signal. That mismatch supports a planetary cause rather than rotating surface features. When it comes to the host GJ 2126, it is a high proper motion star of spectral type M0V, with a radius of about 0.73 solar radii and a mass of around 0.65 solar masses. The star, which is estimated to be at a distance of approximately 124 light years away, has a metallicity at a level of 0.6 dex and its effective temperature is 4,159 K.

Their dataset spans about fifteen years around the critical phases of the orbit. The coverage anchored the fit and strengthened the case for a single object on an extreme path. Giant planets can acquire extreme eccentricities through planet-planet scattering after their birth in a gas disk. Numerical experiments show this process can drive e above 0.9 without invoking a distant stellar companion. As per these details, the system once hosted additional massive bodies that jostled each other until only one remained on a wild orbit. That would line up with the lack of a long-term drift in the present data. The planet’s radius is unknown because no transit has been seen in the available survey photometry. Without the tilt, the true mass remains uncertain, so further work aims to refine those values. Future velocity campaigns could detect subtle variations tied to mutual interactions, if any undiscovered companions exist. Continued astrometric monitoring may also tighten the mass constraints. Thermal measurements and reflected-light studies would be challenging, yet not out of the question for future facilities. The close approach near periastron may offer the best shot at characterization time. Long-baseline velocities will also test for secular changes which hint at additional bodies or tidal effects. A refined inclination would settle the mass question and finally close the door on the brown-dwarf scenario. Further observations of GJ 2126 b are required in order to determine its radius and to constrain its mass, which would shed more light regarding the composition of this exoplanet.

Evidence of life on Mars

 Searching evidence for life which might have existed on Mars

For decades, the search for extraterrestrial life has relied on complex missions, new instruments and billion-dollar budgets. After spending so much time on the Martian surface, the Opportunity rover sent troves of data back to Earth for scientists around the world to analyse in hopes of learning more about the red planet’s geology and atmosphere, past and present. One of those scientists was John Grant, a planetary geologist at the National Air and Space Museum. His aim was to find evidence of conditions which could have supported life on Mars. “It seems that all the necessary pieces are there on Mars for life to have existed,” John said. “We’ve found that there are areas on Mars where water was flowing in the distant past as well as relatively more recently. That’s evolved my thinking from ‘okay, so there was some water long ago' to ‘there were some big lakes there’ to ‘there were habitable environments and maybe life'.” But now, a PhD student and his supervisor at Imperial College London have shown that a device already sitting on Mars could answer one of humanity’s biggest questions: Is anything alive out there, right now? The breakthrough comes from Solomon Hirsch and Professor Mark Sephton of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science & Engineering. The gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) is an instrument that is already installed on the Curiosity rover and planned for use on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover. The team realized that this common piece of equipment can be used in an entirely new way.

Space exploration is a hell of a show, there are surprises around every corner. If we were to find evidence of life on Mars, it would surely make some of us start to question our own existence. It would tell us more about how life evolves. We only have one data point so far, and that’s Earth. There’s been this question since humanity first started to ruminate on big ideas about whether we’re alone in the universe. If you only have to go one planet away to find life, it speak volumes about how life may be distributed throughout the universe. It also changes how and why we explore in and outside our solar system in the future. It also provides us, as humans, some perspective on our place in the universe. “Space agencies such as NASA and ESA don’t know their instruments can already do this,” Sephton said. “Here we have developed an elegant method that rapidly and reliably identifies a chemical bond that shows the presence of viable life.” 

The GC-MS has a long pedigree in planetary science, with earlier versions flying on the Viking missions of the 1970s. Traditionally, scientists have used it to analyse gases released from rocks and soils. But Hirsch and Sephton discovered it could also detect fragile molecular bonds inside the membranes of living cells, a marker of life that is present only while an organism is alive or has very recently died. The technique focuses on intact polar lipids (IPLs), the molecules which make up the external membranes of bacteria and more complex cells. These molecules degrade within hours of death, making them a reliable sign of living organisms. When fed into the GC-MS, IPLs leave behind a sharp, unmistakable spike on the instrument’s readout. “If we find signs of life beyond Earth, the first question will be: Is it living right now?” Hirsch said. “It’s thrilling to think that the technique we developed here could be used to help answer that question.” Researchers unexpectedly found a clear biosignature in polar lipids using GC-MS, with equipment already deployed on space missions. If scientists ever detect such a spike on Mars or another world, it will provide direct evidence of active life rather than long-extinct biology.

Mars is not a welcoming place for life. Its thin atmosphere, freezing surface temperatures and constant radiation from space make survival difficult. Visiting Mars can have implications in other fields. Medical doctors have a completely different set of rationales. How does the human body respond to radiation? If we're ever going to get off the Earth and be an exploring species, Mars is one of the places where we should start. But still, we haven’t gotten to the question of “why?” Why go through all this trouble to study space at all, when we’ve got so many problems to solve here on Earth? Hirsch admits that expectations of finding organisms on the planet’s surface are low. But he points out that life is resourceful. “Life finds amazing ways to survive in extreme circumstances,” he noted. Future missions will also dig deeper into Mars’ crust, where conditions may be more favourable. The Rosalind Franklin rover, part of the delayed ExoMars mission, will drill several feet beneath the surface, where microbes could remain shielded from radiation and potentially active. Beyond Mars, icy moons like Europa and Enceladus are even more promising. They are known to host subsurface oceans and erupt plumes of water vapour into space. Sephton envisions the method being applied there too. “Our active life detection method could be deployed on Mars and the plumes of icy moons in the outer solar system, or in samples returned to Earth from potential alien biospheres,” he said.

The method could also help right here at home. Sephton sees the technique as both cost-effective and versatile. Instead of designing entirely new instruments for each mission, scientists could repurpose existing ones to do more than originally intended. Teams preparing to analyse samples returned from Mars are planning multimillion-dollar facilities to screen for possible life. A quick and simple GC-MS test would make the task more efficient, flagging which samples deserve deeper analysis. It’s an approach that may accelerate discoveries without requiring decades of waiting for the next mission to launch. It shows that sometimes the tools for transformative science are already in our hands – it just takes a new perspective to see them differently.

Whether or not life is discovered, the technique itself represents a leap forward. The search for extraterrestrial life is often portrayed as a grand adventure, requiring futuristic technology and vast budgets. Hirsch and Sephton’s work offers a humbler but no less profound possibility: the answer to one of humanity’s oldest questions may already be riding around the Martian surface waiting to be asked the right question in the right way. As Hirsch put it, the possibility remains remote but real: “Our expectation of finding things alive on the Martian surface is low due to the hostile temperature and radiation conditions. Still, we aren’t ruling out the possibility.” And if life does exist, this new approach may be the simplest way to prove it. By exploring things beyond Earth, we inspire people to get interested in and involved in science. Reaching Mars will inspire a lot of people around the world and might bring some new era of thought process about the universe.