https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/28/scientists-discover-worlds-northernmost-island-off-greenlands-coast

Researchers say the tiny island in Greenland – roughly 30 metres across – was exposed by shifting pack ice

ReutersFri 27 Aug 2021 22.29 EDT

Scientists have discovered a new island off the coast of Greenland, which they say is the world’s northernmost point of land and was revealed by shifting pack ice.

“It was not our intention to discover a new island,” polar explorer and head of the Arctic station research facility in Greenland, Morten Rasch, said of the find last month. “We just went there to collect samples.”

The scientists initially thought they had arrived at Oodaaq, an island discovered by a Danish survey team in 1978. Only later, when checking the exact location, they realised they had visited another island 780 metres to the north-west.

“Everybody was happy that we found what we thought was Oodaaq island,” said Swiss entrepreneur Christiane Leister, creator of the Leister Foundation that financed the expedition.

“It’s a bit like explorers in the past, who thought they’d landed in a certain place but actually found a totally different place.”

The small island, measuring roughly 30 metres (100ft) across and a peak of about 3 metres, consists of seabed mud as well as moraine – soil and rock left behind by moving glaciers. The team said they would recommend it is named “Qeqertaq Avannarleq”, which means “the northernmost island” in Greenlandic.

Several US expeditions in the area have in recent decades searched for the world’s northernmost island. In 2007, Arctic veteran Dennis Schmitt discovered a similar island close by.

The scientists said that although the new island was exposed by shifting pack ice, its appearance now was not a direct consequence of global warming, which has been shrinking Greenland’s ice sheet.

Rene Forsberg, professor and head of geodynamics at Denmark’s National Space Institute, said the area north of Greenland has some of the thickest polar sea ice, though he added it was now 2-3 metres thick in summer, compared with 4 metres when he first visited as part of the expedition that discovered Oodaaq in 1978.

Any hope of extending territorial claims in the Arctic depends on whether it is in fact an island or a bank that may disappear again. An island needs to remain above sea level at high tide.

“It meets the criteria of an island,” Forsberg said. “This is currently the world’s northernmost land.” Although he did warn: “These small island come and go.”

By ReutersAugust 26, 2021 12:02pm  Updated

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CAIRO, Aug 25 – Scientists said on Wednesday they had discovered the 43 million-year-old fossil of a previously unknown amphibious four-legged whale species in Egypt that helps trace the transition of whales from land to sea.

The newly discovered whale belongs to the Protocetidae, a group of extinct whales that falls in the middle of that transition, the Egyptian-led team of researchers said in a statement.

Its fossil was unearthed from middle Eocene rocks in the Fayum Depression in Egypt’s Western Desert — an area once covered by sea that has provided a rich seam of discoveries showing the evolution of whales — before being studied at Mansoura University Vertebrate Palaeontology Centre (MUVP).

The new whale, named Phiomicetus anubis, had an estimated body length of some three meters (10 feet) and a body mass of about 1,300 lb and was likely a top predator, the researchers said. Its partial skeleton revealed it as the most primitive protocetid whale known from Africa.

“Phiomicetus anubis is a key new whale species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African paleontology,” said Abdullah Gohar of MUVP, lead author of a paper on the discovery published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The whale’s genus name honors the Fayum Depression and species name refers to Anubis, the ancient canine-headed Egyptian god associated with mummification and the afterlife.

Despite recent fossil discoveries, the big picture of early whale evolution in Africa has largely remained a mystery, the researchers said. Work in the region had the potential to reveal new details about the evolutionary transition from amphibious to fully aquatic whales.

With rocks covering about 12 million years, discoveries in the Fayum Depression “range from semiaquatic crocodile-like whales to giant fully aquatic whales”, said Mohamed Sameh of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, a co-author.

The new whale has raised questions about ancient ecosystems and pointed research towards questions such as the origin and coexistence of ancient whales in Egypt, said Hesham Sellam, founder of the MUVP and another co-author.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hycean-exoplanets-extraterrestrial-life-earth-like-planets-oceans/

BY LI COHEN

AUGUST 27, 2021 / 7:40 AM / CBS NEWS

Life outside our solar system may be found within just a few years, thanks to the discovery of a new class of super hot, Earth-like planets, according to astronomers from the University of Cambridge.

The Cambridge researchers identified a new class of exoplanet, called Hycean planets, that, much like Earth, are covered in oceans and have atmospheres rich with hydrogen, an element that is essential for life. Many of the planets are “bigger and hotter than Earth”— up to 2.6 times larger than our planet and reaching atmospheric temperatures up to nearly 200 degrees Celsius, or 392 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Hyceans are further categorized as either “dark” or “cold,” with dark worlds only having habitable conditions on their permanent night sides and cold worlds receiving just a little radiation from the stars they orbit. But researchers believe that they could support microbial lifeforms that are similar to those found in the extreme aquatic environments on Earth, and that Hycean planets are likely common throughout space.   https://www.cbsnews.com/newsletters/widget/e879?v=305fa90a33f0116dfca7cfc9a664d373&view=compact#vVNNb9swDP0rgg87RY0tf8W%2BdeiA9TIU6HZahkIfdCPUlgxJiRsU%2Fe%2BjHCfpdh52s8lHPvHx8S2xY9DW%2BKR9S0BaBUmbwKZuklVy0DDhn7TDyGXAwGi9jmAM3noPgXy26pi8r5LguHzR5jk20f6L4aIHlbTB7WGVcBe07OF2H3bW3WP4Z1JmWVbWRUFZmW5oUW0E3SiW05orEJUogaky%2BfVX6Tc%2BQCzuNZF2B%2BYDIHbF1xc8V1VOBWPYVFUNFZ2UFFLIqjLtGFciuZQ87MUdD3FalrKM4jNYRbK8zco2b66w7zr0EeSlBhO0D54M%2FEg6bRTpdQfEGgKI3dFevwAZe24AMdIewIEi2hArgRtPJh12%2BBd2QAy8BtLBRI5Y6T9wHUeY9TYBuZ6WKOal7XuQUfmTfJliQqZ1RSXUnBZZ0VGe8pSKHCoODRc1FFGda91ZO4%2BbBPKJcB%2BcNXY4RpiCg5ZndgX%2BJdgRWbW%2Fg0PUJ26eP58BBib%2FpAMMGEY7wFcN7tI6tovBxxNtFG4On6JLBwd%2BRMfpA5AJ4kqQT8t5hxsJWSpKRWUmGlo0JaNNBzlloq6zLs86xtJzwWmmC8Heg1sIuEHqFRpl0CFpi4vAj3bv5Cyx8CTOgSDhuFEPPQ%2BddcP8BkzOM8YXP13l8HgdRnF3%2FB7J%2FTxyNMUy9B%2FZezXn6zxN6xzdJVgWpykAHckb2tVZs%2BlYI8qyPCu2TLOQxxmB93o%2FxJMane10%2FyEdCxACJu4HsyoeoYxja8n7H67H8C6E0bfb9XY9TdPNUniDx7xdx6%2FteneMzqTwahfX4icecgCHCwpO855Gh9OrvekZePL0dr04478TLmL9y8bv778B

“It’s exciting that habitable conditions could exist on planets so different from Earth,” study co-author Anjali Piette said in a statement.

Researchers say their findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal on Wednesday, indicate that discovering life outside of our solar system within the next few years is possible. 

“Hycean planets open a whole new avenue in our search for life elsewhere,” said Nikku Madhusudhan, the lead researcher from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1430820781618044929&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fnews%2Fhycean-exoplanets-extraterrestrial-life-earth-like-planets-oceans%2F&sessionId=9678d1d942a32cd8a99734d79e396607b58bf106&siteScreenName=CBSNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1890d59c%3A1627936082797&width=550px

Astronomers say a new type of #exoplanet, dubbed ‘Hycean’ planets, could be our best chance of finding the signatures of life outside our Solar System, potentially in the next few years: https://t.co/Qdu6yyiENj@cambridge_astro @CambridgeIPLU @exomadhu #space— Cambridge University (@Cambridge_Uni) August 26, 2021

Exoplanets — planets that orbit a star other than the sun in our solar system — were first identified nearly 30 years ago. Thousands of these planets have since been discovered, and most are between the size of Earth and Neptune. They are often referred to as “super-Earths” or “mini-Neptunes” and range from being mostly rocky to covered in ice. 

In 2019, Madhusudhan’s team published observations of a mini-Neptune, dubbed K2-18b, and found that it, along with similar planets, could support life under certain conditions. They believe that the planet and others may be home to certain biosignatures, including oxygen, ozone, methane and nitrous oxide, all of which are found on Earth. 

“Essentially, when we’ve been looking for these various molecular signatures, we have been focusing on planets similar to Earth, which is a reasonable place to start,” Madhusudhan said. “But we think Hycean planets offer a better chance of finding several trace biosignatures.”

“A biosignature detection would transform our understanding of life in the universe,” he continued. “We need to be open about where we expect to find life and what form that life could take, as nature continues to surprise us in often unimaginable ways.”

Researchers believe that these biosignatures can be detected with spectroscopic observations. Several Hycean worlds could be studied with a next-generation telescope, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers said, which is set to launch this year.