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There are water molecules and ice up on the Moon, so how did they get there? Asteroid and comet collisions are likely to have produced some of it, but a new study suggests another source of lunar water: the Earth's atmosphere.  Hydrogen and oxygen ions escaping from our planet's upper atmosphere and then combining on the Moon could have created as much as 3,500 cubic kilometers (840 cubic miles) of surface permafrost or subsurface liquid water, scientists say.The thinking is that hydrogen and oxygen ions are driven into…

Hidden below the waves, the ocean contains vast reserves of sugar that we never were aware of, according to new research.Scientists have discovered that seagrass meadows on the ocean floor can store huge amounts of the sweet stuff underneath their waving fronds – and there are major implications for carbon storage and climate change.  The sugar comes in the form of sucrose (the main ingredient of sugar used in the kitchen), and it's released from the seagrasses into the soil underneath, an area directly affected by the…

When the Apollo 15 and 17 missions returned to Earth with pieces of the Moon in 1971 and 1972, some of the samples were deliberately set aside for the future.Flash forward half a century and these samples are finally being studied.   In 2019, shortly after an upcoming Artemis mission to the Moon was announced, nine teams of researchers were selected to analyze the untouched rocks and soil brought back by the Apollo missions.Some of the vacuum-sealed samples have never been opened on Earth before. Others have been…

A swarm of 10 bright blue drones lifts off in a bamboo forest in China, then swerves its way between cluttered branches, bushes, and over uneven ground as it autonomously navigates the best flight path through the woods.  The experiment, led by scientists at Zhejiang University, evokes scenes from science fiction – and the authors in fact cite films such as Star Wars, Prometheus, and Blade Runner 2049 in the opening of their paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics."Here, we take a step forward (to) such…