The Winchcombe meteorite was recovered, largely from a driveway, just hours after it fell to Earth, preserving evidence that its early relatives could have filled Earth’s oceans.
geochemistry
Confined at Sea at the End of the World
Embedded on a research cruise in the Antarctic, a journalist joins a scientists’ “summer camp.”
Looking for Life on Enceladus: What Questions Should We Ask?
On icy ocean worlds, a research framework built around the theory of organic chemical evolution could surface deeper insights than a hunt limited to direct evidence of life.
Last Chance Lake Harbors the Highest Known Levels of Phosphate
Bodies of water such as this might have functioned as cradles of life, given their unique biogeochemistry.
Machine Learning for Geochemists Who Don’t Want to Code
Geochemistry π is an easy-to-use step-by-step interface to carry out common machine learning tasks on geochemical data, including regression, clustering, classification, and dimension-reduction.
Comparing Carbon-Trapping Capacities of Anoxic Basins
Low-oxygen regions in the ocean could be prime spots for sequestering biomass—a potential strategy for fighting climate change. But each site has its pros and cons.
Olivine May Have Given Life a Jump Start
A mineral common throughout the solar system nudges a reaction that produces sugar molecules from formaldehyde.
New Constraints on Sulfur Cycling in the Prebiotic Earth
Experiments constraining rates of aqueous reactions and photolysis coupled with a global model constrain the abundance and chemical speciation of sulfur in early Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.
Mammal Droppings Preserve Human and Climate History on the Tibetan Plateau
Geochemical signatures in sediment, which includes organic molecules from human and animal poop, help scientists track the rise and fall of the Tibetan Empire.
These Four Exoplanets Have Wild, Rocky Weather
On many exoplanets, conditions are so exotic that minerals form clouds and fall as rain. Recent studies revealed the rocky weather on these four exoplanets in more detail than ever before.