[Journal of Virology]. Biogeochemical models have become critical for answering questions about the habitability of ocean worlds, especially that of early Earth.
Oceanography
Posted inWater/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Water Planet Recon: How Accurately Can We Measure Earth Ocean’s Deepest Point?
[Research Organization of Information and Systems]. How deep is the deepest ocean—and how precisely can we actually measure it? Bathymetric maps obtained by each sounding at various survey speeds and […]
Posted inAway Teams & Field Reports
Ice Planet Exploration: Tara Polaris I Expedition
[ESA] Soon to be frozen in space and time, this alien-looking vessel is beginning its first mission into drifting ice in the Arctic Ocean. A dozen people won’t leave it […]
Posted inSample Return
Closed-loop In Situ Isolation Of Deep-sea Extremophiles Through Sensor-driven Microenvironment Preservation
[Nature Sensors] Deep sea microorganisms remain largely inaccessible because existing sampling and cultivation methods fail to preserve native high-pressure microenvironments from seafloor to laboratory.
Posted inBiophysics
How A Deep-sea Protein Adapts To An Extreme Environment
[Kyushu University] Life in the deep sea is under immense pressure—literally. Such extreme conditions can disrupt the delicate structures of proteins essential to life. Yet somehow, the proteins in deep-sea […]
![Left: Average ocean fraction, calculated assuming a seawater freezing point of −1.8°𝐶 for Cases 1 and 3 and 0°𝐶 for Case 2. White shows the ice, and blue ocean. Middle: The mean near-surface air temperatures. Shown within the black contours are the regions where these vary between above and below freezing over the course of a single Earth year. Right: The mean surface temperatures. Also shown within the black contours are the regions where these vary between above and below freezing over the course of a single Earth year: these regions are narrower than the air ‘perifreezing zone’.-- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sea-Ice.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inWater/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Sea Ice As An Origin Of Life Location For Hycean And Ocean Worlds
[astro-ph.EP] Water worlds with potential deep oceans are at the forefront of currently observable exoplanetary habitability.
Posted inIcy Worlds
Amplified Cooling Of Snowball Earth From A Salt-albedo Feedback
[Climate of the Past] It is believed that the atmospheric circulation on Snowball Earth produced a net ablation zone exposing bare sea ice.
Posted inWater/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Iron Helped Scientists Trace Earth’s Oxygen. Now It’s Telling A Bigger Story
[Michigan State University] For decades, scientists have studied iron preserved in ancient rocks to reconstruct how Earth’s oceans and atmosphere became rich in oxygen. A new study suggests iron has […]
Posted inArctic / Antarctic / Alpine
Icy Ocean Planet Research: NASA ROSES-25 Amendment 71: New Opportunity A.16 Cryosphere
[NASA]. A.16 Cryosphere solicits high-impact efforts focused on sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers. The expectation is that proposed investigations will use the wealth of data from NASA satellites and […]
Posted inWater/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Ocean World Exploration: 2026 American Samoa ROV + Mapping Exploration
[NOAA]. Most of the 13,581-square-mile National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa lies far below the sunlit coral reefs visible from shore. Its protected waters include deep seamounts, abyssal plains, deep-sea […]