Scientists Discover Micro-organisms That Don't Need Oxygen

Image: R. Danovaro et al., BMC Biology

Okay, this is getting nerdy, but it's still cool. (Science is ALWAYS cool!). Researchers have discovered the first micro-organism (animal) that doesn't need oxygen to survive. The organism dubbed Loricifera, was found on the L'Atalante basin in the Mediterranean.From Science American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS):

The creature's cells apparently lack mitochondria, the organelles that use oxygen to power a cell. Instead they are rich in what seem to be hydrogenosomes, organelles that can do a similar job in anaerobic (or oxygen free) environments. The find could help scientists understand what life might have looked like in the earth's early oceans, which also had very little oxygen.

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New "Goldilocks" exoplanet discovered

Image: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias via ScienceNews

The first observable exoplanet, within an "Goldilocks Zone" has been discovered! This is a HUGE discovery as planets within the zone are considered excellent candidates for supporting life due to their not-too-close/not-to-far distance from their parent star. This "just right" distance allows for liquid water to exist on the surface--making for a comfy environment for life to flourish.

The planet, a gas giant roughly the size of Jupiter or Saturn, is designated as COROT-9b, but it's thought that if Jupiter can have moons, then why not COROT? The moons could be habitable, even if the main planet is not.

While other Goldilocks planets have been discovered, COROT is a diamond in the rough because it's much more easily observable from Earth. From ScienceNews:

Although a number of extrasolar planets with moderate temperatures have been discovered, only a planet that passes in front of — or transits — its star can be studied in depth. The starlight that filters through the atmosphere of the planet during each passage reveals the orb’s composition, while the amount of starlight that is blocked outright indicates the planet’s size.

All the other transiting planets seen so far have been “weird — inflated and hot” because they orbit so close to their stars, notes study collaborator Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory in Sauverny, Switzerland. Deeg, Queloz, and their colleagues report their findings in the March 18 Nature.

The planet is 1,500 light years away  (in the constellation Serpens), so it will be a while before we get to stop in on the neighbors and say hello!

Read the full article.

NYT: "Large Hadron Collider Finally Smashing Properly"

Best headline of the week (so far) and best nerd news all around! From the Grey Lady:

Following two false starts due to electrical failures, protons whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light and to energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece around a 17-mile underground magnetic racetrack outside of Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building sized detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the world.

The soundless blooming of proton explosions was accompanied by the hoots and applause of scientists crowded into control rooms at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built the collider. The relief spread to bleary gatherings of particle physicists all around the world, who have collectively staked the future of their profession on the idea that the new collider will eventually reveal new secrets of the universe, like the identity of the dark matter that shapes the visible cosmos and the strange particle known as the “Higgs,” which is thought to imbue other particles with mass. Until now, these have been tantalizingly out of reach.

Congrats to the scientists at CERN. Send them a thank you that we may now all enter our own personal pocketverses.

Full New York Times article

Newly discovered species of humans in Siberia

Archeologists publishing in the journal Nature, have discovered the 40,000 year-old pinky bone of what appears to be a new species of human--in Siberia. (Actually, it's southern Siberia, but it's still SIBERIA). A DNA analysis revels that the, uh, owner--was neither directly related to humans or neanderthals of the era, but more likely a distinct offshoot of humans. From USAToday:

Analysis of the pinky bone discovered in a dirt layer about 40,000 years old yielded enough DNA for the gene study. It shows the creature's ancestry diverged from humans and Neanderthals roughly 1 million years ago. Dubbed "x-woman" by the researchers, despite its undetermined gender, the pinky owner may have belonged to an archaic human species such as Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis, known only from fossils, or an unknown pre-human species. From the size of the pinky tip, the team estimates its owner was a 5- or 6-year-old child.

Check out the full article or the article at Nature.com. Sharp readers will note that the image found at USAToday is a bit misleading as the pinky belonged to a child and the image is of an already known hominid.

Previously: Hobbits Discovered!