biogeochemistry Archives

Wearing protective gear against toxic gases, Solange Duhamel stands next to a lava flow during an outing to collect samples of freshly deposited lava rock. Credit Christopher Hamilton

Analog Studies, Away Teams & Field Reports, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Exploration Gear & Tech, Extinction events, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Mars, Microbiology & Virology, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Sample Return

Life On Lava: How Microbes Colonize New Habitats

by Keith CowingDecember 19, 2025December 19, 2025

Life has a way of bouncing back, even after catastrophic events like forest fires or volcanic eruptions. While nature’s resilience to natural disasters has long been recognized, not much is […]

Polymetallic nodules, also called manganese nodules, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean; surprising new research suggests deep sea rocks are capable of producing oxygen without help from plants or the sun. Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Geomar Bilddatenbank/ROV KIEL 6000, GEOMAR

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Habitable Zones, Status Report

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: Evaluating Nodule-associated Dark Oxygen Production (opinion)

by Keith CowingDecember 19, 2025December 19, 2025

Editor’s note: this is a response to Oxygen Produced In The Deep Sea Raises Questions About Extraterrestrial Life, Boston University 27 August 2024

Prior to ca. 2.32 Ga, during deposition of the upper Rooihoogte and lower Timeball Hill formations, atmospheric pO2

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Gaia Mission, Habitable Zones, Status Report

Onset Of Persistent Surface Ocean Oxygenation During The Great Oxidation Event

by Keith CowingDecember 15, 2025December 15, 2025

Free oxygen (O2) first began accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere shortly after the Archean-Proterozoic transition during the ‘Great Oxidation Event’ (GOE).

Artist's impression of Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone, namely a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. The discovery of exoplanet Kepler-186f confirmed that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars. Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system, about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. (Image: NASA/Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report

On The Transitional Character and Regularity of Planetary Abiogenesis

by Keith CowingDecember 8, 2025December 8, 2025

The emergence of biology from planetary chemistry remains one of the central open questions in planetary physics, chemistry and biochemistry.

Alkaline limited regime (left) leads to slow climate recovery. Reef space collapse (right) stimulates nannoplankton productivity and climate recovery. Credit: Tristan Salles/PNAS/USYD

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Coral Reefs Have Stabilized Earth’s Carbon Cycle For The Past 250 Million Years

by Keith CowingDecember 2, 2025December 2, 2025

Coral reefs have long been celebrated as biodiversity hotspots – but new research shows they have also played a much deeper role: conducting the rhythm of Earth’s carbon and climate […]

Cores of lava breccia, cemented with white calcium carbonate minerals, recovered from IODP Site U1557 Credit IODP JRSO

Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release, ROVs/Submersibles/Diving, Sample Return

Ancient Rocks Reveal Themselves As Carbon Sponges

by Keith CowingDecember 1, 2025December 1, 2025

Sixty-million-year-old rock samples from deep under the ocean have revealed how huge amounts of carbon dioxide are stored for millennia in piles of lava rubble that accumulate on the seafloor.

Key Martian stressors (e.g., UV radiation, extreme dryness, oxidizing conditions, methane release) -- Nature communications biology

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Desert Worlds, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Mars, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

The Role Of Extremophile Microbiomes In Terraforming Mars

by Keith CowingDecember 1, 2025December 1, 2025

Terraforming Mars toward sustainable life-supporting ecosystems poses unprecedented challenges. Extremophilic microbes, which thrive in Earth’s most extreme environments, offer promising biological strategies for initial Mars colonization providing tools for resource […]

Volatile element abundance of bulk Mars and Earth relative to chondrites (Yoshizaki & McDonough 2020). As volatile element abundance increases with heliocentric distance, Mars is enriched in volatiles. -- astro-ph.IM

Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Fossils & Paleontology, Mars, Missions & Hardware, Press Release

Habitable From The Start: How Initial Planetary Formation Conditions May Create Habitable Worlds

by Keith CowingNovember 29, 2025January 14, 2026

The breadth of topics that encompass the search for life has expanded and evolved significantly since the emergence of the field of astrobiology.

The illustration shows a cutaway revealing the interior of early Earth with a hot, melted layer above the boundary between the core and mantle. Scientists think some material from the core leaked into this molten layer and mixed in. Over time, that mixing helped create the uneven structure of Earth’s mantle that we see today. Illustration by Yoshinori Miyazaki

Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones, Press Release

Strange Anomalies In Earth’s Molten Beginnings And Its Unique Habitability

by Keith CowingNovember 27, 2025

A Rutgers researcher and collaborators link strange anomalies to Earth’s molten beginnings – and its unique habitability.

A total of 154 genomes were analysed to infer HGs and reconstruct ancestral states. Each bar chart represents one terrestrial event node and its three immediate ancestors. For each node, five categories of HGs are quantified: novel, novel core, expanded, contracted and lost. The y axis indicates the number of HGs in each category of each clade. Organism silhouettes (sourced from phylopic.org and the authors, released under public domain dedication (CC0 1.0 Universal)) represent 11 terrestrial events. -- Nature

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Fossils & Paleontology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Nomenclature, Systematics, Natural History, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

How Did Earth’s Animal Life Transition From Aquatic To Terrestrial Environments?

by Keith CowingNovember 22, 2025November 22, 2025

The transition from aquatic to terrestrial life has been one of the most significant evolutionary challenges. This decisive process in the evolution of life on Earth required a profound renewal […]