The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Scientists have come to realize that in the soil and rocks beneath our feet there lies a vast biosphere with a global volume nearly ...

A mysterious phenomenon first observed in 2013 aboard a vessel in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean appeared so preposterous, it convinced ocean scientist Andrew Sweetman that his monitoring ...

Far below the reach of sunlight, in water cold enough to freeze most life in its tracks, scientists have found oxygen being made in the dark. At more than 13,000 feet beneath the Pacific, where no ...

Potato-sized lumps of metal on the seafloor are generating oxygen, a new study has found. Scientists previously believed that oxygen was strictly formed as a byproduct of photosynthesizing plants.

Oxygen fills the air today, but for most of Earth’s early history it barely existed. Scientists say the atmosphere did not hold steady oxygen until about 2.

Some of Earth’s earliest microbes evolved the ability to use oxygen hundreds of millions of years before it accumulated in ...