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Impacts at all scales have altered the surface of the asteroid Bennu. The image, taken by a scanning electron microscope, shows a micrometeoroid impact crater on a particle from Bennu returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission.
The mineralogy of samples returned from asteroid Bennu yield valuable insights into the physical and chemical processes — on both small and large scales — that shape small bodies in the Solar System.
Reactive poorly crystalline iron minerals play a critical role in organic carbon accumulation. Insights from a coastal survey show they are abundant in coastal wetlands and may boost the ‘rusty carbon sink’ in these key carbon-storing environments.
Barite is a relatively heavy mineral that is used in both the medical field and the oil and gas industry. Formed in marine environments, it also provides a valuable record of deep geological time.
Analysis of millimetre-sized fragments from asteroid Bennu suggests that its parent asteroid coalesced in the outer Solar System from primordial nebular dust and ice and was poor in chondrules, objects common in primitive meteorites. Abundant phyllosilicates with minor sulfides, carbonates and magnetite formed during early alteration by water, with evaporite minerals forming later.
Lignin and the monophenols that constitute this polymer promote methane production in anoxic ecosystems, contributing an estimated 1.2–14.2% of methane emissions in peatland. The methoxy group can be directly converted to methane by methanogens. Consequently, increased lignin input to peatland from shrub encroachment would release more methane than previously thought.
The combination of plate motion and intraplate stress with a high-resolution, plate-boundary-resolving, global convection model has made it possible to holistically evaluate plate driving forces and reveal that Sumatra–Java slab pull is the predominant driver of the India–Eurasia collision. This suggests the growth of the Tibetan Plateau required external forces from adjacent subduction zones.
Material from the Hokioi crater on asteroid Bennu experienced space weathering and suggests microcratering plays a more active role on carbonaceous bodies than initially thought, according to a study of OSIRIS-REx asteroid return samples.
Samples returned from asteroid Bennu largely comprise hydrated sheet silicates with sulfides, magnetite and carbonate that indicate alteration by a fluid that evolved from neutral to alkaline, according to a micro- and nanoscale mineralogical study.
Ocean simulations and proxy-constrained climate reconstructions suggest that the rapid retreat of West Antarctic outlet glaciers was initiated by local northerly wind trends over the twentieth century.
Reduced winds below subtropical ridges are a key factor in the initiation of summer marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean Sea, according to a statistical analysis of large marine heatwave events.
Experiments suggest aerotolerant archaea produce methane in the surface layers of coastal sandy sediments and that this activity is driven by seaweed and seagrass metabolites.
Abiotic methylation triggered by plastic debris can occur independently of light conditions and therefore drive methylmercury formation in dark waters, according to an experimental study combined with density functional theory calculations.
Eddy-covariance observations suggest that rain pulses over global drylands drive substantial soil carbon emissions, which are underestimated in current measurement and modelling approaches.
Anaerobic microbial degradation of lignin and derived monophenols enhances methane production in an anoxic peatland in China, according to soil microcosm experiments and metabolomic analyses.
Coastal wetlands are enriched in metastable iron minerals over well-crystalline phases and have a similar fraction of iron oxide-associated organic carbon as uplands, according to a global database combined with a survey of China’s coastal wetlands.
Increased salinity of Subantarctic Mode Water during the initial phase of the Last Deglaciation could have enhanced deep water formation in the North Atlantic, according to proxy records from a sediment core in the southern Indian Ocean.
Ancient sedimentary DNA evidence shows that large blooms of the haptophyte algae Phaeocystis antarctica enhanced marine carbon uptake during the Antarctic Cold Reversal.
The main driving force for the continuing India–Eurasia collision is slab pull from the adjacent Sunda subduction zone, according to global geodynamic simulations constrained by observations including the Indo-Australian intraplate stress distribution.
Magmas beneath the Main Ethiopian Rift ascend through the crust on timescales of only weeks to months, indicating that, during continental rifting, a magmatic plumbing system can be well established before the lithosphere has thinned.