Tag Archives: life

Beneath the Earth’s surface lies a vast and mysterious ecosystem, home to a staggering number of microorganisms, many of which are newly discovered. A recent study, published by the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), revealed that nearly 70% of all life on Earth exists underground, challenging our understanding of where life can thrive. This hidden world, as uncovered by researchers, opens …

Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has long been cast as a frozen relic of the early solar system — quiet, airless, and lifeless. But new research suggests that billions of years ago, this dwarf planet may have harbored the right ingredients to support simple microbial life. That’s according to a new study using …

You’d assume that a medicine you can buy without a prescription at any pharmacy, big-box retailer, or grocery store is completely safe, right? But as more research comes out, we’re learning that over-the-counter (OTC) drugs can come with a long list of potentially dangerous side effects. The latest such study shows that two very popular and very common pain meds …

Scientists have developed a better model to understand “steam worlds,” which are planets smaller than Neptune and larger than Earth that are too hot to have liquid water at their surface and thus have atmospheres filled with water vapor. Though steam worlds are unlikely to harbor life, modeling them more precisely could help scientists better comprehend ocean planets better, which …

Scientists have engineered a strain of bacteria with a genetic code unlike anything found in nature, marking a groundbreaking advance in synthetic biology. The microbe, called Syn57, is a lab-made version of Escherichia coli, a bacterium that normally causes infections in the gut, urinary tract and other parts of the body. Unlike all known life, which relies on 64 codons, …

When 40-year-old Lauren ‘Loz’ Antonenko found herself battling crippling fatigue and weight gain in spite of her diligent health and fitness regime, she knew something was wrong. ‘I’d had a pituitary tumour about ten years earlier,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘But with treatment I eventually shrank it. Once these symptoms started up again, I went for a blood test …

When NASA’s Dawn mission arrived at Ceres in 2015, scientists and the general public got their first detailed look at this strange and beautiful planetoid. As the largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt, accounting for more than 39 percent of its total mass, Ceres is the only object in the belt that has undergone hydrostatic equilibrium (aka. became round …

The new records were announced at the end of a vague countdown on the musician’s website Taylor Swift is selling another vinyl version of her forthcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl after teasing the drop with a mysterious online countdown on her website that began a few hours beforehand. Swift teased the previous vinyl versions similarly. The album is …

Summary: A new study of over 13,000 adults found that having a strong sense of purpose in life is linked to a reduced risk of dementia. Those with higher purpose were 28% less likely to develop cognitive impairment, even when accounting for genetic risk and other factors. The effect was consistent across racial and ethnic groups and modestly delayed the …

Beneath our feet lies a hidden world of staggering scale, a deep ecosystem brimming with billions of microorganisms. Its astonishing diversity has earned it the nickname the “subterranean Galapagos” and suggests that its genetic richness may rival or even surpass life above ground. Presenting their work at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in 2018, the researchers calculated the size …