


Tubeworms live beneath the planetary crust around deep-sea vents
The conditions are hot, sulphurous and low in oxygen
HYDROTHERMAL VENTS are the planet’s exhaust pipes. Kilometres beneath the ocean surface, they relentlessly belch out searing hot water rife with harsh chemicals from beneath Earth’s crust. When they were first discovered in 1977, nobody expected these inhospitable sites to bear signs of life. And yet, thriving alongside these vents were colonies of tubeworms, mussels and clams entirely new to science. It is hard to think of an environment that could be more hostile. Now new work is revealing evidence that these animals are raising their young in just such a place: the fractured rocks beneath the vents themselves.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has achieved something extraordinary
If SpaceX can land and reuse the most powerful rocket ever made what can’t it do?

Could life exist on one of Jupiter’s moons?
A spacecraft heading to Europa is designed to find out

Noise-dampening tech could make ships less disruptive to marine life
Solutions include bendy propellers and “acoustic black holes”
Meet Japan’s hitchhiking fish
Medaka catch rides on obliging birds, confirming one of Darwin’s hunches
AI wins big at the Nobels
Awards went to the discoverers of micro-RNA, pioneers of artificial-intelligence models and those using them for protein-structure prediction
Google’s DeepMind researchers among recipients of Nobel prize for chemistry
The award honours protein design and the use of AI for protein-structure prediction