Phytoplankton
The Living Breathing Ocean
Rainforests have been dubbed the Earth’s lung, but like us, our planet has two lungs. The second one is the ocean.
Read MorePlankZooka & SUPR-REMUS
Much of marine life begins as microscopic larvae—so tiny, delicate, and scattered in hard-to-reach parts of ocean that scientists have…
Read MoreSpring Arrives Earlier in the Ocean Too
Warmer oceans are triggering phytoplankton to start their annual blooms up to four weeks earlier than usual—a signal of how…
Read MoreIlluminating an Unexplored Undersea Universe
Twenty-five years ago, the Hubble Telescope was launched to look out to the vast darkness of outer space. It captured…
Read MoreA Telescope to Peer into the Vast Ocean
There are more single-celled plankton in the ocean than stars in the universe. A new instrument is about to depart on a mission across the vast Pacific to capture images of what is out there.
Read MoreUncovering the Ocean’s Biological Pump
Dan Ohnemus clearly remembers the highlight of his fourth-grade class in Bourne, Mass. He and his classmates made a satellite…
Read MoreDMS: The Climate Gas You’ve Never Heard Of
For generations of mariners, a tangy, almost sweet odor served as a signal that land was nearby. What sailors called…
Read MoreLittle Things Matter A Lot
One group of bacteria—the cyanobacteria—has completely transformed Earth’s environment through their long history. Three billion years ago, ancestors of cyanobacteria infused Earth’s ancient atmosphere with the byproduct of their photosynthesis—oxygen—changing the chemistry of the planet and setting the stage for entirely new oxygen-breathing life forms to evolve. Without the cyanobacteria, the life we see around us, including humans, simply wouldn’t be here.
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