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Infrared emission from methane suggests atmospheric heating by auroral processes. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere. This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf, W1935, is cold and lacks a host star; therefore, there is no obvious source for the upper atmosphere energy. The team speculates that the methane emission may be due to processes generating aurorae. These findings are being presented at the 243rd meeting of the American...

Ep. 62 If fossil fuels come from fossils, why have scientistsfound them on one of Saturn’s moons? A lot of what you’veheard about energy is false. Dr. Willie Soon explains. TIMESTAMPS(01:49) Fossil Fuels in Space (14:27) Global Warming Throughout History (25:31) Outside Forces are Ruining Science (40:41) Evidence of God (48 minutes and 49 seconds video of interview in link below)https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1744777758507504061

During an interview in 1994, L. Fletcher Prouty spoke about what petroleum is. It isn’t what we think it is. It isn’t a fossil fuel. And it is the second most prevalent liquid on Earth, he said. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ L. Fletcher Prouty was Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under US President John F. Kennedy. A former colonel in the United States Air Force, he retired from military service to become a bank executive and subsequently became a critic of US foreign policy, particularly the covert activities of the CIA about which he had considerable inside knowledge....

NIRCam (the Near Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured this picture of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Webb identified carbon dioxide on the icy surface of Europa that likely originated in the moon’s subsurface ocean. Photo courtesy of NASA Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows carbon dioxide on a region of Jupiter's moon Europa, suggesting it potentially could harbor conditions suitable for life. Astronomers found carbon dioxide on the icy surface of a region called Tara Regio, and analysis from two studies suggests it likely originated in the moon's subsurface...

In the 1960s, one pocket of uranium hidden within the mountains was transformed into a productive mine, and the massive element used as fuel for nuclear fission was extracted to the tune of more than 1,000 tonnes per year. But by 1990, the Königstein mine‘s production had fallen off, and much of the mine was flooded... Then strange life forms started to move in, prompting the mine’s keepers to call in scientists... In the damp, dark, acidic, uranium-filled environment, biofilms composed of microbes had taken over. Orange acidic “streamers” looking like long, thin worms lazily swayed in the liquid drainage...

Ever since M. King Hubbert in the 1950s convinced a lot of people with his "peak oil" theory that production would collapse and we'd eventually exhaust our crude supplies, the clock has been running. And running. And it will continue to run for some time, as technology and new discoveries show that there's still an ocean of oil under our feet.Engineering and Technology Magazine reported this week that BP — the company that once wanted to be known as "Beyond Petroleum" rather than "British Petroleum" — is saying "the world is no longer at risk of running out of resources.""Thanks...

The tiny organisms had survived in the South Pacific seabed - in sediment that is poor in nutrients, but has enough oxygen to allow them to live. Microbes are among the earth's simplest organisms, and some can live in extreme environments where more developed life forms cannot survive. After incubation by the scientists, the microbes began to eat and multiply. Professor and study co-author Steven D'Hondt, from the University of Rhode Island, said the microbes came from the oldest samples taken from the seabed. "In the oldest sediment we've drilled, with the least amount of food, there are still living...

Magnified image showing microbes revived from 101.5 million-year-old sediment. Credit: JAMSTEC ======================================================================= For decades, scientists have gathered ancient sediment samples from below the seafloor to better understand past climates, plate tectonics, and the deep marine ecosystem. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers reveal that given the right food in the right laboratory conditions, microbes collected from sediment as old as 100 million years can revive and multiply, even after laying dormant since large dinosaurs prowled the planet. The research team behind the new study, from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the URI Graduate...

IN 2013, SCIENTISTS were stunned to find microbes thriving deep inside volcanic rocks beneath the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest, buried under more than 870 feet of sediment. The rocks were on the flank of the volcanic rift where they were born, and they were still young and hot enough to drive intense chemical reactions with the seawater, from which the microbes derived their energy. Now, however, another team of researchers have discovered living cells inside exceedingly old, cold oceanic crust in the middle of the South Pacific. It isn’t yet clear how these new microbes are managing to survive—and...

Conspiracy theorists will readily tell you that the U.S. military is hiding alien corpses in a secret facility in the Nevada desert. But paleontologist and University of Washington geology professor Peter Ward thinks that scientists should be looking for a different type of alien life on earth: alien microbes. Ward is the author of several popular books about astrobiology, including the controversial Rare Earth, co-authored with Donald Brownlee. In his latest book, Life as We Do Not Know It, Ward addresses an issue often avoided by astrobiologists. Although all known life on Earth has a similar DNA-based chemistry, life found...

A few months after detecting an "unusually high" level of methane on Mars, researchers have yet to figure out what's causing the spike. According to a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Newcastle University in the U.K. have ruled out that the spike could have been caused by wind erosion of rocks that had trapped the methane from fluid inclusions and fractures on the Red Planet's surface. "The questions are -- where is this methane coming from, and is the source biological?" principal investigator Dr. Jon Telling said Telling added that over the last decade, winds on Mars have...

High levels of methane could potentially be generated underground by microbes called methanogens that survive without oxygen and produce the gas as a metabolic byproduct. Project scientist Ashwin R. Vasavada told the Curiosity science team in an email that “Given this surprising result, we’ve reorganized the weekend to run a follow-up experiment,” the Times wrote. The readings on Wednesday are over three times that of a sudden spike in 2013 that lasted several months; after first finding nothing after its touchdown in 2012, Curiosity detected approximately seven parts per billion of methane later in the year. The newest measurements are...

NASA’s Curiosity rover returned some seriously surprising data to Earth earlier this year, with readings of elevated methane levels that were hard to explain. Subsequent tests attempted to pin down the cause of the higher-than-expected readings but scientists have yet to come up with a definitive answer. Now, as questions about methane continue to swirl, scientists studying the behavior of gasses on Mars have noticed that oxygen on the Red Planet also acts much differently than it does on Earth. The observations were made in the Gale Crater, which the rover has called home since it landed there back in...

While the truth might be out there, technological aliens don't seem to be — at least not yet. New results from the most comprehensive Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program ever undertaken — which surveyed 1,327 nearby stars for signals from intelligent beings — have turned up empty. "There's certainly nothing out there glaringly obvious," ... lead author of a paper about the results, which were published in The Astrophysical Journal, told Live Science. "There's no amazingly advanced civilizations trying to contact us with incredibly powerful transmitters." While the team didn't find anything this time around, Price said that there...

"Our results support the idea that methane release on Mars might be characterized by small, transient geological events," researcher Frank Daerden said. The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe measured methane in the Martian atmosphere a day after NASA's Curiosity rover detected the gas in Gale Crater. Photo by ESA ============================================================= April 2 (UPI) -- Some 15 years ago, a European probe measured traces of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Now, NASA's Curiosity rover and the European Space Agency's Mars Express have confirmed the gas' presence in the air above Gale Crater. "The presence of methane could enhance habitability and...

Curiosity rover mission recently determined that background levels of methane in Mars' atmosphere cycle seasonally, peaking in the northern summer. The six-wheeled robot has also detected two surges to date of the gas inside the Red Planet's 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater — once in June 2013, and then again in late 2013 through early 2014. These finds have intrigued astrobiologists, because methane is a possible biosignature. Though the gas can be produced by a variety of geological processes, the vast majority of methane in Earth's air is pumped out by microbes and other living creatures. Some answers may soon...

For the precocious hunter of off-Earth life, the Drake equation is the ever-ready, go-to toolkit for estimating just how (not) lonely humans are in the Milky Way galaxy. The equation was developed by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961 in a slight hurry so that attendees of an upcoming conference would have something to confer about, and it breaks down the daunting question "Are we alone?" into more manageable, bite-size chunks. The equation starts with some straightforward concepts, such as the rate of star formation and the fraction of stars hosting planets. But it quickly moves into tricky terrain, asking for...

Barely living "zombie" bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth's subsurface—245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans on the surface, according to scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to reveal Earth's innermost secrets. On the eve of the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting, scientists with the Deep Carbon Observatory today reported several transformational discoveries, including how much and what kinds of life exist in the deep subsurface under the greatest extremes of pressure, temperature, and low nutrient availability.Drilling 2.5 kilometers into the seafloor, and...

....Science, of course, has a habit of turning the fantastic into the prosaic. But 150 years on from Verne’s work, researchers have actually begun a project to drill through the Earth’s crust for the first time, hoping to penetrate more than 5km beneath the sea bed to reach the mantle below. Needless to say, it is most unlikely to reveal monsters living inside the Earth. But if we do look down in search of life, what do we find? The best way to find underground creatures is to travel into the depths of a cave. The first things you’re likely...

Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere. The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability. There are many sources of the gas around the world, some natural and some man-made, such as landfill waste disposal sites...