Science Daily News

• Some severe COVID-19 cases linked to genetic mutations or antibodies that attack the body September 24, 2020
  Two new studies offer an explanation for why COVID-19 cases can be so variable. A subset of patients has mutations in key immunity genes; other patients have auto-antibodies that target the same components of the immune system. Both circumstances could contribute to severe forms of the disease.
• Comet discovered to have its own northern lights September 21, 2020
  Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has its own far-ultraviolet aurora, data reveal. It is the first time such electromagnetic emissions in the far-ultraviolet have been documented on a celestial object other than a planet or moon.
• Ancient volcanoes once boosted ocean carbon, but humans are now far outpacing them September 14, 2020
  A new study of an ancient period that is considered the closest natural analog to the era of modern human carbon emissions has found that massive volcanism sent great waves of carbon into the oceans over thousands of years -- but that nature did not come close to matching what humans are doing today.
• Possible marker of life spotted on Venus September 14, 2020
  Astronomers have discovered a rare molecule -- phosphine -- in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes -- floating free of the scorching surface but needing […]
• New Hubble data suggests there is an ingredient missing from current dark matter theories September 10, 2020
  Recent observations have found that something may be missing from the theories of how dark matter behaves. This missing ingredient may explain why researchers have uncovered an unexpected discrepancy between observations of the dark matter concentrations in a sample of massive galaxy clusters and theoretical computer simulations of how dark matter should be distributed in […]