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Scientists are looking to bring back the infamous woolly mammoth through science! But there is controversy and doubt that it could even be done. First of all it isn't necessarily going to be a mammoth but instead more of a mammoth-like  elephant. This to me is preferable to bringing back the actual woolly mammoth as it seems like a poor decision. Also it should be known that an  actual self sustaining mammoth is far ahead of the question. For now, an embryo is the goal, and even that may take a while.
Perhaps I've seen too much Jurassic Park but I am skeptical of this project. Sometimes nature should just be left to do its thing and this seems awfully mad-scientist.

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Woolly mammoths are in the news again. According to recent news reports, they are " on the verge of resurrection" and " will be back from extinction within two years." The prompt for this was a statement by the Harvard geneticist George Church, lead scientist for the " Woolly Mammoth Revival" project.

However, in the wake of the excitable reports, other commentators have been urging caution. The palaeontologist John Hawks went so far as to call the reports of the mammoth's imminent revival " fake news".

So are shaggy-coated pachyderms really poised to stampede across the frozen wastelands of Siberia any time soon? If such creatures are created, will they really be mammoths? And even setting aside exactly when this might happen, is it a good idea to bring a species back from the dead?

I am a former cell biologist and have spent the last two years researching and writing about de-extinction, the science of bringing extinct animals back to life. I have spoken with Church, as well as many of the other scientists at the forefront of de-extinction research, and two things are clear to me. The first is that a living, breathing woolly mammoth is far from imminent, and the second is that, nevertheless, the science needed to make it is progressing at quite a lick.

The woolly mammoth would not be the first species to be revived after having been wiped out. The world's first de-extinct animal was born in 2003 in a laboratory in Spain. It was a type of wild mountain goat called a bucardo, or Pyrenean ibex.

The animal only lived for a few short minutes, but since then the science underpinning de-extinction has progressed in leaps and bounds. The researchers who brought back the bucardo tell me that only two things stand between them and a whole herd of healthy de-extinct bucardo: time and money.

Church is not talking about making a living, breathing, fur-coated mammoth calf

Such revivals depend on manipulating basic biology.

An animal's life begins when a single cell splits in two, then keeps on dividing to form a miniscule bundle of cells called an "embryo". In time, the cells of the embryo divide and become more specialised. Different tissues, organs and limbs form, leading eventually to a complete living animal.

Anyone wanting to make a woolly mammoth must first create a single mammoth cell, coax it into becoming an embryo, and then nurture that embryo while it grows into an entire mammoth.

Speaking ahead of this week's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, Church said he thought he was a couple of years away from making an embryo. In my opinion, this is entirely possible, but only so long as you pay close attention to what Church is claiming.

The first thing to bear in mind is that Church is not talking about making a living, breathing, fur-coated mammoth calf. His work so far focuses solely on single cells.

For the last few years, Church and his team have been carefully placing mammoth genes into the cells of Asian elephants, woolly mammoths' closest living relatives. They are endowing these elephant cells with the "essence of mammoth": the potential to grow long, luscious locks, lay down Sumo-wrestler-sized rolls of body fat, and other characteristics that should help the animal to look and act like a mammoth.

It will be an animal whose DNA is largely elephant, but with a smattering of judiciously-placed mammoth DNA

When I spoke to Church in 2015, he had already added in the gene for mammoth haemoglobin. Haemoglobin is the molecule in red blood cells that ferries oxygen around the body. The mammoth version works even at low temperatures; essential for an animal, like the woolly mammoth, that evolved during an ice age.

It is now two years later and Church's team have made 45 changes to the elephant genome. They are moving closer to their goal of "mammoth-ifying" an elephant cell.

But they may have a long way to go. A 2015 study compared the woolly mammoth genome with that of living Asian elephants, and identified changes in 1,642 genes. Church's 45 changes amount to a small fraction of that total, but Church argues that he does not need to put every single tweak into his elephant cells to make something mammoth-like.

Church has never claimed that he is making a bona-fide, genuine, 100% authentic woolly mammoth. Instead it will be an animal whose DNA is largely elephant, but with a smattering of judiciously-placed mammoth DNA.

He talks of making a "mammoth-elephant hybrid" or a "cold-adapted elephant". I prefer to call it a "mammophant" or "elemoth".

In order to make a mammophant embryo, Church's team will also need to advance the science of cloning

Assuming Church manages to create a mammophant cell, the next step will be to convert it into a mammophant embryo. One way to do this is to insert the mammophant DNA into an egg cell - again, from an Asian elephant - that has had its DNA removed. This is the same technology used for cloning.

In 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Many different mammalian species have since been cloned, but the elephant is not among them. Cloning research suggests that, just because it is possible to clone one type of animal, it is not necessarily easy to clone another, even if they belong to closely-related species.

One key problem is that there is still a lot we do not understand about cloning. During the process, the egg somehow reprograms the newly-inserted DNA to a more youthful state so that it can drive embryonic development. It is a bit like restoring the factory settings on a mobile phone, but no one knows how it happens or how to fully control it. So in order to make a mammophant embryo, Church's team will also need to advance the science of cloning.

It is a mammoth task (sorry about that) but it is not impossible. However, even if Church pulls it off, he will still need to find a way to nourish the embryo while it grows.

When I first heard about attempts to bring back the woolly mammoth, I was not keen. There was an elephant in the room, which most people either failed to notice or chose to ignore: in order to revive the woolly mammoth, scientists would have to perform experiments on elephants.

These are not animals to be experimented with

First, elephant eggs would be needed for the cloning process. Then, surrogate elephant mothers would be required to nurture the developing embryos in their wombs, then give birth to them and bring them up. Since cloning is an inexact science that produces far more failures than live births, this would put the health of the elephant surrogate at risk.

The trouble is that there are so few elephants left. The number of Asian elephants has more than halved over the last three generations because of habitat loss and poaching, and they are classed as " endangered".

In short, these are not animals to be experimented with. I am not keen on bringing back the woolly mammoth at the expense of an animal so deserving of our care.

However, Church is unfazed. He believes he can perform his experiments without risking any elephants at all.

The elephant eggs needed for cloning need not come from the reproductive systems of living elephants. There are other ways to make them.

Animal studies have shown that skin cells can be reprogrammed in a dish to make stem cells, which can then be coaxed to form eggs. It is almost like cellular alchemy. Rather than performing invasive surgery to retrieve eggs from adult female elephants, it should be possible to make them from non-invasive skin biopsies.

The technology of artificial wombs is still, well, embryonic

Once the embryos have been made, they could be nurtured, not in adult animals, but in "artificial wombs". This may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but Church and other researchers are quietly developing the science needed to make it happen. He explained last week that researchers in his lab have grown a mouse embryo in an artificial womb for 10 days; halfway through its normal gestation period.

In theory, artificial wombs would get around the surrogate mother problem. But it will be no mean feat to scale them up from mice to mammoths.

Mouse pregnancies last for 20 days, while mammoth ones take over two years. And while a newborn mouse weighs as much as a paperclip, a newborn mammoth calf is the size of a washing machine. What's more, each species will need a different cocktail of "ingredients" to help its embryo grow.

In short, the technology of artificial wombs is still, well, embryonic.

At this point it should be clear that de-extinction is profoundly difficult, and that we are not going to have any living mammoths roaming the Siberian tundra in the next few years. But at the same time, it seems likely that if scientists like Church keep pushing, they will get there eventually.

The bigger question is: should we do it? What would be the point?

Advocates of de-extinction will tell you there are many reasons to bring extinct species back to life.

We live in the midst of a global biodiversity crisis, with up to 150 species disappearing every day. Extinction rates are currently 1,000 times higher than during pre-human times. We are responsible for this travesty. So if the tools exist to undo some of that damage, maybe we have a moral obligation to do just that.

De-extinction should be about producing populations of genetically-diverse animals that can breed and live in the wild

However, I think we need to think a little more deeply about it.

In 2014, ecologist John Ewen of the Institute of Zoology in London, UK helped design a checklist. The idea was to help researchers select the most suitable candidates for de-extinction. The paper went on to influence a set of de-extinction guidelines drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The checklist essentially asks whether, if we re-created an extinct species, it could survive in our modern world. Among other things, it asks: whether there is suitable habitat to be had; if the original cause of extinction is still present; whether the animal could become a pest; and how its revival might affect people living nearby.

"Resurrecting the woolly mammoth should be more than the production of a biological orphan destined for an exhibit," says Ewen. "To embrace this technology with responsibility, we should consider the loftier goals of ecological enrichment, and assess the feasibility and risks surrounding mammoth reintroduction."

In other words, de-extinction should be about producing populations of genetically-diverse animals that can breed and live in the wild, where they can contribute to the ecosystem.

All living things provide vital services to the ecosystems they are part of. There are pollinators, seed dispersers, water purifiers, pest controllers, and much else.

An estimated 500 gigatonnes of organic carbon is locked up in the Arctic permafrost

Mammoths were gardeners. In their heyday, they trundled around eating grass, trampling saplings, and fertilising the ground with their nutrient-rich dung. When they went extinct, there was no other species to do these jobs. As a result, the rich "Mammoth steppe" turned to scraggy, mossy tundra.

If we were to plug the ecological niche left vacant by mammoths' demise, it may be that they could return the unproductive wastelands of northern Siberia to their biodiverse heyday. But no one knows for sure.

"There will be uncertainty here," says Ewen. "We need to judge the capacity for the mammoth to restore such habitat."

Similarly, Church argues that mammoths could help stop dangerous climate change.

A series of as-yet-unpublished experiments in Siberia have suggested that, where large grazers are present, soil temperatures are several degrees colder than where they are absent.

It would still take well over half a century to make a single viable herd

"When big animals graze, they trample the snow, which exposes the surface of the soil to cold air," says biologist Sergey Zimov of the Northeast Science Station in Cherskii, Russia, who conducted the research. "This helps keep the ground frozen."

An estimated 500 gigatonnes of organic carbon is locked up in the Arctic permafrost. That is two to three times as much as in all the existing rainforests combined. As our climate changes and the Arctic melts, scientists have warned that this "carbon time bomb" could go off and accelerate global warming still further.

However, if we were to repopulate the wilds of Siberia with herds of woolly mammoth, the argument goes, they might prevent the carbon time bomb from going boom.

It is an enticing argument, but not without flaws.

Suppose Church perfects all the methods that he needs and makes a viable hybrid "mammoth" embryo in the timescale he imagines. It would then take a further two years for that embryo to turn into a calf, and another 15 years for it to reach sexual maturity. Even if all the technical hurdles involved in making a mammoth were overcome tomorrow, it would still take well over half a century to make a single viable herd, which would not be anywhere enough to do the job.

There appear [to be] some uncertainties that may reduce the value of the mammoth as a de-extinction candidate

Instead, by that time, if current predictions are to be believed, the Arctic permafrost will already have melted. What's more, the Siberian ecosystem may have changed too much and may be unable to support the new arrivals.

In other words, we cannot look to mammoths to help solve global warming. The real story is that climate change undoubtedly played a role in polishing mammoths off last time round: they died out when Earth's climate warmed and the ice retreated. So if anything, climate change makes the future of any de-extinct mammoth looks decidedly woolly.

"Using the IUCN reintroduction criteria, there appear [to be] some uncertainties that may reduce the value of the mammoth as a de-extinction candidate," says Ewen.

At this point, it may seem that bringing back woolly mammoths is a hopeless prospect. The challenges are certainly formidable. But that is not to say that de-extinction is without value.

For me, the single biggest argument in favour of resurrecting extinct species is the beneficial spin-offs it will create for endangered living species.

Conservationists plan to use genome editing and cloning to help save black-footed ferrets

The same techniques being used to bring back extinct animals - stem cell technology, genome sequencing and editing, and assisted reproduction techniques such as cloning - can be used, far more easily, on threatened living species.

In New Zealand, genome sequencing is being used to help rescue the kākāpō; a large, green, flightless parrot. The species is suffering from fertility problems and inbreeding. Researchers are currently decoding the full genetic codes of all 154 living kākāpōs, and plan to use the information to help steer their breeding program. By mating only the most genetically distinct birds, they hope to produce offspring that are more healthy and fertile.

Similar plans are also afoot in North America.

Conservationists plan to use genome editing and cloning to help save black-footed ferrets. In the 1980s, these feisty little creatures were on the brink of extinction, partly because of an infectious disease called sylvatic plague. A decades-long captive breeding program has kept the species going, but there are still only a few hundred in the wild.

Worse, today's wild black-footed ferrets are massively inbred. They are all effectively second cousins. This is not good for the long-term health of the species.

If both of these projects pan out, they would make conservation history

However, stored away in vats of liquid nitrogen are the frozen cells of wild ferrets that were captured, but then died without passing on their genes. These cells are a resource waiting to be used.

In 2015, the pro-de-extinction organisation Revive and Restore submitted two ground-breaking proposals to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the body that oversees American nature.

The first is to use the frozen cells to make new, genetically vibrant animals. These will then be able to breed naturally, giving the population back some of its lost genetic variation.

But there is no point going to all this trouble if the animals are then set free and become infected with plague. So the second proposal seeks to edit the ferret's genome to make it plague-resistant.

If both of these projects pan out, they would make conservation history. Even better, similar techniques could then be applied to countless other species.

In Kenya, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy is home to the world's last three northern white rhinos. These magnificent beasts were once widespread in east and central Africa before poaching, civil war and habitat loss took their toll.

We do not know if projects like this will work. But desperate times call for desperate measures

The last three - Sudan, Najin and Fatu - are grandfather, mother and daughter. They are too old, too ill and too closely-related to ever breed naturally. Their subspecies is functionally extinct and they are the walking dead.

However, stem cell technology and assisted reproduction could even now pull them back from the brink. Led by veterinarian Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, researchers plan to create some truly special test-tube babies.

Using sperm from male northern white rhinos, collected and stored before they died, and eggs created by the same method that Church is developing for his mammoths, the team hope to create the embryos of northern white rhinos in a dish. These will then be transferred into the surrogate wombs of the animal's closest living relative, the southern white rhino, who will carry the little embryos to term.

We do not know if projects like this will work. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

The world is warming, habitats are being lost, many places are becoming more polluted, and the biodiversity crisis is deepening. De-extinction, for all its pitfalls, is worthy of our attention because of the potential it has to help repair ailing ecosystems.

De-extinction is not just about bringing back the dead

In short, this is a bigger issue than simply whether we could, or should, bring back woolly mammoths. They are only one species, and there are many we could restore - whether already extinct, or merely close to it.

When de-extinct animals finally blossom into healthy wild populations, they could vastly boost overall levels of biodiversity, not just by their presence, but by the impact they will have on the other species in their ecosystems.

What's more, the knowledge we are gaining from figuring out how to bring back extinct species is already having a positive effect on the wildlife that we still have. In other words, de-extinction is not just about bringing back the dead. It is also about helping the living.

Helen Pilcher (@HelenPilcher1) is a freelance science writer. Her book Bring Back the King: The new science of de-extinction was published in 2016 by Bloomsbury.
Join over six million BBC Earth fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 5 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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Reviving woolly mammoths will take more than two years

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Woolly mammoths are in the news again. According to recent news reports, they are " on the verge of resurrection" and " will be back from extinction within two years." The prompt for this was a statement by the Harvard geneticist George Church, lead scientist for the " Woolly Mammoth Revival" project.

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There is a large crate known s a "megaslump" in Siberia. It is 1 km long and 86 m deep. Scientists are watching it with interest due to its uniqueness. This crater is particularly fascinating due to the layers it reveals that help scientists further understand past climates in the area. This event was triggered by deforestation in the sixties that removed shade and caused warmer ground. The area is home to fragile permafrost that is melting now and causing the crater. Scientists are using the circumstances though to further understand climate change.
I find this interesting because it serves as tangible proof of exactly what humans are doing to their planet. Also the fact that scientists are using these newly discovered layers is incredibly fascinating.

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Near the Yana river basin, in a vast area of permafrost, there is a dramatic tadpole-shaped hole in the ground: the Batagaika crater.

The crater is also known as a "megaslump" and it is the largest of its kind: almost 0.6 miles (1km) long and 282ft (86m) deep. But these figures will soon change, because it is growing quickly.

Locals in the area avoid it, saying it is a "doorway to the underworld". But for scientists, the site is of great interest.

Looking at the layers exposed by the slump can give indications of how our world once looked - of past climates. At the same time, the acceleration of the growth gives an immediate insight into the impact of climate change on the increasingly fragile permafrost.

There are two types of permafrost. One is from glacier ice, left over from the last Ice Age and now buried underground. The other type, the one present around the Batagaika crater, is ice that has formed in the ground itself. Often, this ice is trapped beneath a layer of sediment and has been frozen for at least two years.

The Batagaika crater opens up a vast area of previously buried permafrost, some of which first formed many thousands of years ago.

During the last 200,000 years, Earth's climate has alternated repeatedly

The trigger that led to the crater started in the 1960s. Rapid deforestation meant that the ground was no longer shaded by trees in the warmer summer months. This incoming sunlight then slowly warmed the ground. This was made worse by the loss of cold "sweat" from trees as they transpire, which would have kept the ground cool.

"This combination of less shading and less vapid transpiration led to warming of the ground surface," says Julian Murton of the University of Sussex in the UK.

As the ground surface warmed up, it caused the layer of soil right above the permafrost to warm. This caused the permafrost itself to thaw. Once this process started and the ice was exposed to warmer temperatures, melting escalated.

For these reasons, scientists are actively monitoring the crater. One study, published in the journal Quaternary Research in February 2017, found that analysing the layers now exposed could reveal 200,000 years of climatic history.

During the last 200,000 years, Earth's climate has alternated repeatedly between relatively warm "interglacial" periods and chilly "glacial" periods in which ice sheets expanded.

The Batagaika sediment layers provide a "continuous record of geological history, which is fairly unusual," he says. "That should allow us to interpret the climate and environmental history there."

The climatic history of a huge part of Northern Siberia is little understood

However, for now the dates are not certain. "We are still working on the chronology," says Murton.

Next, he needs to gather and analyse more sediments. Ideally, these will be collected using a drill in order to get a "continuous sediment series", which will help give more accurate dates. The permafrost record could then be compared with data from other temperature records, such as ice-cores from ice sheets.

"Ultimately, we're trying to see if climate change during the last Ice Age [in Siberia] was characterised by a lot of variability: warming and cooling, warming and cooling as occurred in the North Atlantic region," says Murton.

This is important, because the climatic history of a huge part of northern Siberia is little understood. By reconstructing environmental changes that happened in the past, scientists could help forecast similar changes.

For example, 125,000 years ago, the climate was going through an interglacial period, during which it was several degrees warmer than it is now. "If we can understand what the ecosystem was like then - that might give us some inkling into how the environment may change now if the climate is warming," says Murton.

We now know that this permafrost is changing fast

If the permafrost responds to warming in a similar way as it did after the last Ice Age, we can expect to see many more slumps, big basins and lakes forming.

New land may even start to appear, as thawed ice exposes buried land some 33-66ft (10-20m) below the original surface. "You have this very ice-rich permafrost that starts to thaw from the top downwards as the ice drains and melts, and so we get a new landscape develop," says Murton.

These impacts may not be all that far off. We now know that this permafrost is changing fast.

Frank Günther of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany, and colleagues have been monitoring the site for the last decade, using satellite images to measure the rate of change.

Continuous growth means that the crater gets deeper and deeper every year

During their study, the head wall of the crater has grown by an average of 33ft (10m) per year. In warmer years, the changes have been even greater, sometimes up to 98ft (30m) per year. Günther announced these findings at the American Geophysical Union meeting in December 2016.

He also has reason to believe that the side wall of the growing crater will reach a neighbouring eroding valley in the coming summer months. This in turn will "very likely" be a new trigger for more growth.

"On average over many years, we have seen that there's not so much acceleration or deceleration of these rates, it's continuously growing," says Günther. "And continuous growth means that the crater gets deeper and deeper every year."

This has other worrying consequences.

Many of the ice deposits that are now being exposed formed during the last Ice Age. This ground ice contains a lot of organic matter, including plenty of carbon that has been locked away for thousands of years.

"Global estimations of carbon stored in permafrost is [the] same amount as what's in the atmosphere," says Günther.

There is no indication that the erosion of this crater will slow down any time soon

As more permafrost thaws, more and more carbon is exposed to microbes. The microbes consume the carbon, producing methane and carbon dioxide as waste products. These greenhouse gases are then released into the atmosphere, accelerating warming further.

"This is what we call positive feedback," says Günther. "Warming accelerates warming, and these features may develop in other places. It's not only a threat to infrastructure. Nobody can stop this development. There's no engineering solution to stop these craters developing."

There is no indication that the erosion of this crater will slow down any time soon, as it continues to grow year on year.

That makes the future of Siberia's permafrost look very wobbly indeed.
Melissa Hogenboom is BBC Earth's feature writer. She is If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. @melissasuzanneh on Twitter.

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In Siberia there is a huge crater and it is getting bigger

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Near the Yana river basin, in a vast area of permafrost, there is a dramatic tadpole-shaped hole in the ground: the Batagaika crater. The crater is also known as a "megaslump" and it is the largest of its kind: almost 0.6 miles (1km) long and 282ft (86m) deep.

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The Titanic is slowly being degraded due to a newly discovered bacteria. Older ships, which were made of wood, were not subject to this new bacteria that seems to prefer an iron-based diet. This is why this bacteria has an interest in the steel Titanic. The bacteria has been named Halomonas titanicae due to its discovery. It is characterized by it's ability to survive in water with high salinity. Bacteria like this are known to protect ships from corrosion which is why many last for a long time but this specific one has a chance of completely destroying the ship.
I think this is a fascinating discovery and animal impacts on human artifacts are very interesting to me. I hope they can find a way to protect this relic although I don't think that will be the case.

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When it set sail on its maiden voyage in 1912, no one could have predicted what the opulent RMS Titanic would look like now - a rusting hulk at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. But at least something remains of the ship, more than a century after its ill-fated transatlantic journey.

However, scientists believe that in a few decades there may be nothing left of the ship at all, thanks to a species of bacteria which is slowly eating away its iron hull.

Robert Ballard, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett, discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985. What was not widely known at the time was that the discovery only came about because of Ballard's involvement in a secret US Navy mission to locate the wrecks of two US nuclear submarines sunk during the Cold War. It just happened that the Titanic was found between the two wrecks.

At the time of that initial discovery the ship was remarkably preserved. It is 3.8km below the surface, and the lack of light and the intense pressures make the area inhospitable to most life, slowing corrosion. Fast-forward 30 years, though, and the hull is rusting away, thanks to metal-munching bacteria. Some researchers now give the shipwreck just another 14 years before it is gone forever.

So what do we know about the microbe that is responsible?

The story started in 1991 when scientists from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada collected samples of icicle-like formations of rust - "rusticles" - hanging from the ship. They took them back to the lab and saw that they were teeming with life.

But it was not until 2010 that a separate group of scientists, led by Henrietta Mann at Dalhousie University, decided to identify what type of life it was.

The hull is rusting away, thanks to metal-munching bacteria

They isolated just one species of bacteria, and it turned out to be brand new to science. Mann and her colleagues named it Halomonas titanicae after the ship.

The bacteria can survive in conditions that are completely inhospitable to most lifeforms on Earth: water that is pitch-black and at crushing pressures.

But it has inherited another, even more astonishing trick. Halomonas bacteria are often found living in another type of extreme environment: salt marshes. Here, the salinity of water can vary dramatically because of evaporation, and Halomonas bacteria have evolved to cope with the problem.

If the water that bathes cells is too salty, water will rush out of cells, causing them to shrink, collapse and die. However, too little salt can be just as deadly. For instance, red blood cells placed in pure water burst as water floods in.

Both of these events happen because water "wants" to move from an area of high water concentration to an area of low water concentration, a phenomenon known as osmosis.

But what does this mean?

Salts, sugars and other small molecules all dissolve in water, clogging it up and taking up space, meaning that there is less space for the water itself. When these areas of low water concentration come into contact with pure water, the water will rush in to equalise the balance, in much the same way that warm air rushes out of a house in winter when the door is opened. As cell membranes are permeable to water, this means that all lifeforms are extremely sensitive to external and internal salt levels.

They isolated just one species of bacteria, and it turned out to be brand new to science

To stop their cells from bursting or shrinking, many species produce compounds like sugars or amino acids that keep the concentration of "stuff" inside their cells stable relative to the outside, stopping water flooding in or gushing out.

However, not many organisms can do so to the extent that Halomonas bacteria can. Joe Zaccai at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France is part of an international team of scientists who have analysed just how the bacteria can survive in such extreme and variable conditions. They found that Halomonas uses a molecule called ectoine to protect itself from osmotic pressure.

"If a cell is to survive in a fluctuating salt environment, it must have a way to compensate by adjusting the concentration of its internal solution," says Zaccai. " Halomonas produces ectoine in order to counterbalance the outside osmotic pressure. As the outside salt concentration fluctuates so will the ectoine concentration response."

In other words, the saltier the water gets, the more ectoine the bacteria produce inside their cells to stop water rushing out. However, this adaptation can be highly dangerous for an organism. The more "stuff" that accumulates inside a cell, the more it can get in between the water molecules, disrupting water's unique properties.

The reason that water is so absolutely necessary for life is that the unique bonds between its atoms - known as hydrogen bonds - allow it to act as a solvent. Other chemicals can dissolve in it, and can react together.

The reactions of life need to take place in a solution, which is why all our cells are bathed in liquid water. What's more, RNA and DNA, the proteins and enzymes responsible for carrying out the daily work of the cell, and the membranes which give them structure, need to be surrounded by a layer of water in order to function.

Microbes colonise a shipwreck almost immediately after the ship comes to rest on the seafloor

This layer of water, known as a "hydration shell", is crucial to maintain the correct folding of proteins, and in turn their function. If this was disrupted, then the proteins could unravel and fall apart, which would kill the cell.

As the bacteria clearly are able to accumulate extremely high concentrations of ectoine inside their cells - the study found that Halomonas produces so much ectoine that it accounts for 20% of the microbe's mass - the molecule must somehow leave these important properties of water in place.

To investigate how, the scientists led by Zaccai bombarded the bacteria with a beam of neutrons. By looking at the scatter pattern produced by neutrons bouncing off the atoms in the microbe's cell membranes and proteins, the scientists were able to "look" at structures at the molecular and atomic level.

There are few places in the world that are equipped for such experiments. The researchers worked at the Institut Laue Langevin, one of a handful of neutron research centres in the world.

"By watching how neutrons were scattered by different samples, we succeeded in determining how ectoine acts on proteins and cell membranes and, most importantly, water," says Zaccai. "Rather than interfering, [ectoine] actually enhances the solvent properties of water that are essential to biology".

It turns out that, no matter how much ectoine there is dissolved inside the cell, the shell of water surrounding proteins and the cell membrane remains 100% water, allowing the cell's metabolism to continue as normal. That is because, when the ectoine forms hydrogen bonds with water, it forms large clusters that will not fit on the surfaces of proteins and membranes, so only pure water can remain.

The shipwreck becomes a kind of artificial reef, home to a plethora of life

Initial investigations of H. titanicae showed it can grow in a water with as little as 0.5% weight by volume and as much as 25%, although it does best with a salt concentration between 2% and 8%.

However, it is not clear how, or if, this salt tolerance has helped it colonise the shipwreck.

H. titanicae is not the only bacteria that loves to inhabit shipwrecks. Various types of microbes colonise a shipwreck almost immediately after the ship comes to rest on the seafloor. They quickly build gooey sticky films over every available surface, called "biofilms". These biofilms are like a haven to corals, sponges and molluscs, which in turn attract larger animals.

Very quickly the shipwreck becomes a kind of artificial reef, home to a plethora of life.

Ancient wooden shipwrecks are set upon by microbes that feed on wood, whilst more modern steel ships attract bacteria like H. titanicae, which love to eat iron. Whilst H. titanicae may eventually destroy the Titanic, many of these bacteria actually protect their ships from corrosion, which is one of the reasons why we still have shipwrecks dating back as far as the 14th Century BC.

Once it hits the floor it becomes available to microbes that rush to cover every surface

In 2014, a team of scientists from the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) conducted perhaps the most in-depth study to date into microbial life on shipwrecks. They looked at eight shipwrecks in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The shipwrecks included wooden-hulled sailing ships dating to the 19th Century, one wooden-hulled sailing ship possibly from as early as the 17th Century, and three World War Two steel-hulled vessels, one of which was sunk by a German U-boat.

They found that the material the ship was built from was the crucial factor that determined the type of microbe that was attracted to the wreck. Wooden ships were teeming with bacteria that attack and feed on the cellulose, hemicellulose, or lignin found in wood. Steel ships, on the other hand, were occupied mostly by iron-loving bacteria.

Strangely, although the bacteria were essentially feeding on the ship, they actually served to protect them from corrosion.

"In essence, what happens is that any vessel that sinks, be it a wooden 19th-Century ship or a steel-hulled ship from World War Two, once it hits the floor it becomes available to microbes that rush to cover every surface," says marine archaeologist Melanie Damour at BOEM in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of the expedition's lead scientists.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico

"At first the ship will begin to corrode as it is in contact with seawater, but as microbes begin to colonise the wreck they begin to form a biofilm, which forms a protective layer between the ship and the seawater," says Damour.

This means that any kind of mechanical impact, such as an anchor dragging across the wreck, will break through that protective crust and open the bare metal to the seawater again, speeding up corrosion.

It is not just mechanical impact that can speed up the corrosion. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and much of it entered the deep ocean. In laboratory experiments, the team has found that exposure to oil can speed up the corrosion of shipwreck material. This suggests that oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill may be accelerating the corrosion of shipwrecks on the seafloor, but the team have not yet been able to find out if this is really happening.

"Every bacteria, fungus and microbe has a specific function it performs that it has evolved to do over millions of years," says Damour.

These shipwrecks are important historical monuments

"Iron-sulphate-reducing bacteria are attracted to the iron in steel shipwrecks, but others love the hydrocarbons that make up oil, and so these flourished after the 2010 spill. However, we found that not all microbes can handle being exposed to oil and chemical dispersants and some find it extremely toxic. Even four years later, the oil was still present in the environment, and the damaging effect it has on bacteria and biofilms meant the shipwrecks were exposed to seawater and were corroding at a much faster rate."

The finding is alarming. More than 2,000 sunken ships lie on the Gulf's seafloor, including everything from 16th-Century Spanish vessels to the ruins of a World War Two U-boat. These shipwrecks are important historical monuments, which provide unique insight into the past. They also provide a home for deep-sea life.

But eventually, all the shipwrecks - including Titanic out in the Atlantic - will be eaten away entirely, whether through metal-munching bacteria or seawater corrosion. The iron in the 47,000-tonne vessel will end up in the ocean. Eventually, some of it will be incorporated in the bodies of marine animals and plants. The Titanic will have been recycled.
Join over six million BBC Earth fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 5 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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The wreck of the Titanic is being eaten and may soon vanish

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When it set sail on its maiden voyage in 1912, no one could have predicted what the opulent RMS Titanic would look like now - a rusting hulk at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. But at least something remains of the ship, more than a century after its ill-fated transatlantic journey.

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Bumblebees are back from hibernation (crowd goes wild)! This means that they will be laying eggs soon so they need all the food they can get. This is a PSA that nothing helps the bumblebees more than a nice clean flower garden (clean meaning none of those nasty pesticides). Bumblebees rely on nectar and pollen to survive and due to the recent decrease in the bumblebee population, it is important to take care of the ones we have. Now that bumblebees are officially on the endangered list they are a priority.
I believe that by planting healthy flowers, this issue can be resolved over time.

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At this time of year, bumblebee queens are a familiar sight foraging on spring flowers.

After spending the winter hibernating, they need to build up vital energy stores before laying their eggs.

According to the largest study of its kind, access to flower-rich habitats from spring through to summer is key to the survival of successive generations of the bees.

Scientists have discovered that bumblebees need flowers within a short distance (1km) of their colony.

Bumblebees are among the most important insect pollinators, yet they are in decline globally.

Until now, aspects of the lifecycle of bumblebees have remained a mystery, said ecologist, Dr Claire Carvell.

"Our research was looking to unravel some of these mysteries - and in particular to try and look at how the structure of habitats across a landscape, or the availability of flowers for the bees, affected this one key aspect of their life cycle, which was the survival of their families between years," she told BBC News.

The study, which took place in rural Buckinghamshire, is the first to track the effects of the surrounding landscape on wild bumblebees, from one generation to the next.

Researchers at the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology sampled DNA from bumblebees of three different species. They reconstructed the family tree of hundreds of families of wild bumble bees across a large area of farmland.

They were able to match queen bumblebees to their daughters and sisters, to look at survival from one year to the next.

"What we found was that this survival between years of the bumblebee families was positively linked with the quality of the habitats surrounding their nests across that farm landscape," said Dr Carvell.

Even small increases in the amount of flowering plants through the spring and the summer could have a big effect, raising the survival rate of queen bumblebees by up to four times.

"They need to be carefully selected to provide pollen and nectar throughout the bumblebee's life cycle," said Dr Carvell. "And it's a combination of spring-flowering trees, crops such as willow and hedgerow flowers - even dead nettles and dandelions, for example.

"These are particularly important to getting colonies started in the spring and seeing them survive through to be successful into the next generation."
Plants for pollinators: Wild plants
Achillea millefolium (common yarrow)

Cantaurea scabiosa (greater knapweed)

Digitalis purpurea (common foxglove)
Garden plants
Caryopteris x clandonensis (caryopteris)

Dianthus barbatus (sweet william)

Hesperis matronalis (dame's violet)
Source: RHS
The scientists found that as little as 1 to 2% of flower-rich habitat in a landscape, or even a garden or park, was enough to have a significant impact on populations of wild bumblebees.

Co-researcher Dr Matthew Heard said while there was an urgent need for more robust data on pollinator population decline, the study "strongly suggests that conservation interventions can have a lasting, positive impact on wild pollinators in agricultural landscapes".

Bumblebees are social insects, living in colonies. When the queens emerge in early spring, having spent the winter hibernating alone, they go out in search of food and a place to nest.

Each queen forms its own nest, lays its eggs, and produces a few hundred daughter workers.

Towards the end of the season, males and new queens hatch, which emerge from the nest to go in search of a mate.

Only fertilised queens go on to hibernate, after feeding heavily on pollen and nectar to build up fat stores.

The research is published in the journal, Nature.

Follow Helen on Twitter.

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At this time of year, bumblebee queens are a familiar sight foraging on spring flowers. After spending the winter hibernating, they need to build up vital energy stores before laying their eggs. According to the largest study of its kind, access to flower-rich habitats from spring through to summer is key to the survival of successive generations of the bees.

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Trump is pretty well known as a denier of climate change and his recent actions pertaining to the energy industry support this. Trump removed the restrictions on burning coal as a fossil fuel ignoring any of the implications on global warming. Environmentalists are now getting ready to fight back. Many are suing the Trump administration for his actions. This topic is bringing conflict because although this may be damaging ecologically, many coal workers are relying on the jobs this will offer.
I believe the environment is a priority especially at times like this but I feel insensitive denying jobs from others. This does put the United States back in the race for cleaner energy though.

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Politics News | Breaking Political News, Video & Analysis-ABC News

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Get up to the minute breaking political news and in-depth analysis on ABCNews.com.

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Oklahoma has become subject to a recent spike in earthquakes, particularly in the last seven days. The state that before 2008 averaged fewer than 5 earthquakes a year, is now experiencing hundreds. Although not necessarily devastating, the change is starting to concern many people. These quakes are being caused by the oil and gas industry but not necessarily by fracking. Instead these are caused by the insertion of wastewater underground in order to change the pressure dynamic.
Scientists are investigating the issue and looking at a possibility of setting regulations. This would require a better understanding of what exactly is happening to cause the earthquakes.

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Oklahoma saw more than 100 earthquakes just in the past seven days. You read that right: Oklahoma.

The temblors were joined by other kinds of shifts this week. In two firsts, the state's officials acknowledged its spike in quakes is likely caused by oil and gas industry's underground injections of wastewater; and the federal government released a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon, punctuating the risks for energy-producing states.

The man-made quakes, known as "induced seismicity," aren't confined to Oklahoma. The new U.S. Geological Survey report identifies 17 zones across states including Colorado, Ohio, Arkansas, and Texas that show increased tremors.

Oklahoma's key role in the U.S. oil and gas boom might explain public officials' reluctance to connect it with the concurrent boom in newly discovered fault lines. "So many of our jobs depend on [oil and gas]," Kristy Yager, a spokesperson for Oklahoma City, told National Geographic last year. "It's a difficult position to be in."

But the problem's grown too big to ignore. As its newly launched website notes, Oklahoma experienced quakes at a rate 600 times the historical average, "very likely triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells."

The latest developments confirm that quakes from energy activity are neither a temporary blip nor a regional anomaly. Here are 5 key questions and answers about the issue:

So, wastewater disposal has been linked to quakes. What's the connection with fracking, exactly?

During hydraulic fracturing, fluid and sand are pumped at high pressure into shale formations to release oil and gas. That isn't the process most closely associated with quakes-rather, it's the injection wells used to dispose of water after drilling. Some of the wastewater stored deep underground was used for the drilling itself, but the majority of it is "produced" water that came up along with oil and was separated out.

Make no mistake: Fracking itself has been linked to quakes, too. "There are plenty of known cases" where drilling caused earthquakes, says Amberlee Darold, research seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey. "Generally, they're just not felt."

Fracking has caused a handful of documented felt earthquakes also, but "it's not considered an ongoing hazard," Darold says. "Injecting water into the ground and changing the dynamics of the pressures on faults-that's something that's not fully understood."

California gets earthquakes all the time. Why don't we hear about man-made quakes there?

Even though California is both quake-prone and home to thousands of oil and gas wells, it hasn't seen a link between the two. The reason is a combination of regulations and geology, says Jason Marshall, chief deputy director of the California Department of Conservation.

Decades-old state rules govern the pressure at which water is injected into the ground. In addition, Marshall said, the water that's being injected is going back into specially designated zones, such as existing oil fields, that have already been depleted of water. The effect is of restoring pressure that was lost.

In states such as Oklahoma, the water that's pumped out "is not injected back where it came from," says Bill Ellsworth, who co-authored the new USGS report. "It's put into a different [rock] formation, a formation that's never been tampered with before." That helps drillers squeeze out more oil, but it also can cause quakes. (Read more about fracking's potential water impact on California here and here.)

Are there other industry activities that might be causing quakes?

California does see some induced quakes-from geothermal energy production, which also involves injecting water underground. Indeed, the rising number of man-made earthquakes has implications that go beyond just wastewater injection.

Geothermal energy has touched off thousands of earthquakes -most of them too small to be felt, but some in the 4.0 range, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Quakes are also a potential concern with carbon dioxide injection, which is being used to help recover oil and sequester carbon underground.

What else don't we know about induced quakes?

A fair amount. Darold noted that in Oklahoma, work is under way to better understand the Arbuckle formation, where most of the water is being injected, and to better understand faults beneath the state. (A preliminary map of them was released this week.)

More than typical earthquake pattern, where a main shock is preceded and followed by smaller ones, Darold said, Oklahoma is seeing more quake "swarms"-a series of temblors with no obvious main shock that can last months. Her agency is studying this.

"We by no means know where all the faults are in the state, and a lot of these earthquake swarms are delineating faults that were previously unknown," Darold said.

Oklahoma finally acknowledged the link. What now?

With more widespread agreement on the problem and its likely cause, it's not clear whether new regulations or other measures will stop or reduce the rumbling.

"This is definitely hopeful," said Johnson Bridgewater, director of the Sierra Club's Oklahoma chapter, said of the state's shift in messaging. But in terms of action, he said, he's seen "nothing significant in terms of actual changes on the ground." His group wants a moratorium on injections in 16 counties.

Ellsworth advocates improvements in three areas: a better system for detecting quakes while they're still small; more timely and complete reporting from drillers on injection activities; and better understanding of the conditions underground.

His agency is working to bring the science "down into more human terms," Ellsworth says, "so that people will have a chance [to] prepare for what we see is the potential for something stronger."
The story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge. On Twitter: Follow Christina Nunez and get more environment and energy coverage at NatGeoGreen.

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New Rumblings About Man-Made Quakes: 5 Questions Answered

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Oklahoma saw more than 100 earthquakes just in the past seven days. You read that right: Oklahoma. The temblors were joined by other kinds of shifts this week. In two firsts, the state's officials acknowledged its spike in quakes is likely caused by oil and gas industry's underground injections of wastewater; and the federal government released a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon, punctuating the risks for energy-producing states.