Carbon-rich

Researchers have discovered that carbon-rich permafrost is thawing at increasingly high rates, likely as a result of human-induced climate change, making the Arctic an important potential source of methane emissions.

Scientists say they hope the stardust will confirm the long held suspicion that carbon grains from comets played a major role in the origin of life on Earth. They point out that comets are the most carbon-rich bodies in the solar system, full of organic compounds that fall to Earth all the time.

Researchers with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, studied the impact of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere — one byproduct of carbon-rich industrial emissions — on the larvae of two closely-related oyster species — Eastern oysters, which are indigenous to the Atlantic coast of the United States, and Suminoe oysters, which are native to Asia.