The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Scientists have come to realize that in the soil and rocks beneath our feet there lies a vast biosphere with a global volume nearly ...

Oxygen, the molecule that supports intelligent life as we know it, is largely made by plants. Whether underwater or on land, they do this by photosynthesizing carbon dioxide. However, a recent study ...

Potato-sized lumps of metal on the seafloor are generating oxygen, a new study has found. Scientists previously believed that oxygen was strictly formed as a byproduct of photosynthesizing plants.

Oxygen fills the air today, but for most of Earth’s early history it barely existed. Scientists say the atmosphere did not hold steady oxygen until about 2.33 billion years ago, during the Great ...

Some of Earth’s earliest microbes evolved the ability to use oxygen hundreds of millions of years before it accumulated in ...