While some Earth-like worlds can generate significant O2 only by biology, “waterworlds” and “desert worlds” can build up O2 even without life because of chemical changes from atmosphere loss to space.
Editors’ Highlights
After the Dust Cleared: New Clue on Mars’ Recurring Slope Lineae
An imaging campaign after the 2018 planet-encircling dust storm on Mars revealed a significant increase in detections of enigmatic recurring slope lineae and new insights into how they might form.
Relating Seismicity and Volcano Eruptions
A global study suggests that volcanic eruption forecasting and detection may be improved by examining earthquake mechanisms and clustering in combination with individual volcano properties.
Probing the Age of the Oldest Ocean Crust in the Pacific
A new study extends the calibration of the Mesozoic Sequence down to the Mid Jurassic with multiscale marine magnetic anomaly data, demonstrating extraordinarily high reversal frequency.
Dueling Eyes on Ecosystem Metabolism Tell Diverging Stories
Multiple state-of-the-art independent observing systems consistently disagree on magnitudes and patterns of ecosystem metabolism of carbon dioxide, but together can shed new insight.
Observing the Sun via Soil Moisture Measurements
Solar radio bursts are background noise for satellite-based radio observations that monitor soil moisture, so, with appropriate processing, those observations can provide data on radio bursts.
SE Asia Peatlands Subsidence Tied to Drainage Density
Human-made channelization significantly accelerates peat decomposition and drives ground-surface deformation in tropical wetlands.
New Data on Smoke Particulates from Cellular Radio Signals
Through analyzing radio links signal levels, retrieved surface smoke particulate concentrations can complement limited datasets from air quality stations in improving impacts analyses for wildfires.
How River Engineering Alters Carbon Cycling
Artificial levees in the Lower Mississippi River bypass floodplain processing and increase delivery of carbon to the ocean.
A New Robust Estimator of Earthquake Magnitude Distribution
The b-value, which describes the fraction of large versus small earthquakes, is less sensitive to transient changes in detection threshold and may improve the detection of precursory changes.