Jeffrey Marlow

Ahhh so sad we missed this! Hope it went well!

🌊😍

Even when the heat vanishes from hydrothermal vents, energy abounds in the chemicals and minerals that remain…

😂 Yesssss....

The age-old question: is it worse to instinctively reach for your house key when entering your office, or your office key when entering your home? Asking for a friend... 😂

This looks like a good one!

Do We Need Hobbies? We’re all busy. But are we busy in the right ways?

What makes a hobby? Can we really just do something for its own sake anymore? Interesting stuff from @newyorker.com:

"A committed hobbyist...must strive to be proficient but not professional, creative but not productive, ambitious without being anxious..."

www.newyorker.com/culture/open...

Getting Mars samples back to Earth would be transformative; as an astrobiologist, it's absolutely a (the?) top priority.

Our work on the Measurement Definition Team - led by Brandi Carrier from NASA and Elliot Sefton-Nash from ESA - was a key first step. Now we just need to make it a reality!

Mars Sample Return Sample Receiving Project Measurement Definition Team Final Report | Astrobiology Astrobiology

Figuring out where hundreds of possible measurements fit across the spectrum of research value, time-sensitiveness, and destructiveness guided the thinking, which is now in final report form on Astrobiology! 👇

www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10....

As you might imagine, things got complicated real quick - our team of geologists, geochemists, and microbiologists all had great ideas of the major scientific questions these sample might answer. We sifted through what may be the most complicated excel spreadsheet the world has ever known 😂

Over the last few years, I had the pleasure of serving on the Mars Sample Return Measurement Definition Team. Our driving question was straightforward enough: what do we do with precious samples that will hopefully be returned from Mars in the coming years?

Congrats on the kiddo! But yes, we're also lagging far behind anything to do with farms and the process of going to bed... 😂

Frontiers | Controls on the Precipitation of Carbonate Minerals Within Marine Sediments The vast majority of carbonate minerals in modern marine sediments are biogenic, derived from the skeletal remains of organisms living in the ocean. However,...

An excellent guide to carbonate burial dynamics in ocean sediments - the most prolific route of carbon removal from the atmosphere...

www.frontiersin.org/journals/ear...

Coming soon(ish)! 🎉🌊

GenomeFISH: genome-based fluorescence in situ hybridization for strain-level visualization of microbial communities Abstract. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is a powerful tool for visualizing the spatial organization of microbial communities. However, traditio

Annoyed by low signal for your FISH experiment that hybridizes to a brief snippet of ribosomal RNA sequence? Why not make your own probes that target, you know, the *full genome*? 🤯

Really interesting new approach called GenomeFISH! academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...
@isme-microbes.bsky.social

The Dark Frontier by Jeffrey Marlow | Waterstones Buy The Dark Frontier by Jeffrey Marlow from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

Hi UK friends! If you're looking for a fun deep-sea read in the spring, today's your chance to grab The Dark Frontier on sale! 🦑

www.waterstones.com/book/the-dar...

How to Change a Memory A disarmingly personal account of the new science of memory manipulation by one of today’s leading pioneers in the field

Guess what y'all - the great @okaysteve.bsky.social has a book coming out November 4th: "How to Change a Memory"! Steve is a genius, and this book is no doubt going to be an awesome read. Pre-order it now if you know what's good for you!

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Impact Report 2024

A lovely recap of our Chilean Seeps & Canyons cruise, from @schmidtocean.bsky.social's annual report. Excited to start sharing some of our findings in the months ahead!

2024annualreport.schmidtocean.org/canyons-vent...

The Very Hungry Microbes That Could, Just Maybe, Cool the Planet

Yay methanotrophs! My favorite type of microbe... 🥰

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/c...

A large intraplate hydrogen-rich hydrothermal system driven by serpentinization in the western Pacific: Kunlun A hydrogen-rich hydrothermal system in the western Pacific reveals potential for hydrogen resources and early life.

A huge field of hydrothermal vents - driven by serpentinization and formed by a massive hydrogen explosion - recently discovered in the western Pacific!

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

The Inside Story of the U.N. High Seas Treaty A new global agreement protects marine life in parts of the ocean that laws have been unable to reach.

(And if you want to re-live the tense negotiations when the final text came together, here's my report from a couple years ago!)

www.newyorker.com/news/daily-c...

Hard-Fought Treaty to Protect Ocean Life Clears a Final Hurdle

The BBNJ "High Seas" Treaty has been ratified by 60 countries and is now officially in effect! What a journey it's been... 🎉

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/c...

DeSSC New Users Program [Application Deadline: 3 October 2025]

Are you an early career scientist curious about getting involved in deep-sea research? Apply for our "new user program" at @agu.org this year 👇

www.unols.org/news/early-c...

Microbes Also Change the Climate. Could That Help Us? | Quanta Magazine A collection of short dispatches from the field of climate microbiology conveys the contributions that single-celled life forms make to our climate system, and how we can work with them to address cli...

Loving this set of vignettes about microbes' role in climate dynamics 👏

www.quantamagazine.org/microbes-als...

Space weathering effects in Bennu asteroid samples - Nature Geoscience Material from the Hokioi crater on asteroid Bennu experienced space weathering and suggests microcratering plays a more active role on carbonaceous bodies than initially thought, according to a study ...

Space weathering effects in Bennu asteroid sample! This paper reads like a bit like a geomorphology textbook on the microscale - really cool to see how minuscule observations can point us to process.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

DNA sequencing, microbial indicators, and the discovery of buried kimberlites - Communications Earth & Environment Soil microbial community compositions respond to the presence of kimberlite ore minerals under laboratory conditions and in real-world field settings, suggesting that microbial DNA sequencing could be...

A microbial community's composition can help reveal the mineralogy of its surroundings 😮

www.nature.com/articles/s43...

‘Your materials have been incinerated.’ The confounding process of traveling with scientific samples. - The Boston Globe Many researchers described the process of transporting samples as bureaucratic and complicated. Some noted that universities do not adequately advise scientists on how to comply with changing governme...

Never has an article headline spoken more directly to me 😂

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/23/m...

A diverse and distinct microbiome inside living trees - Nature Microbiome analyses of living trees show that a single tree can host approximately one trillion bacteria, with microbial communities distinctly partitioned between heartwood and sapwood and with minim...

Score another one for the microbes! Somehow not surprising, but astonishing at the same time - the tree microbiome 👏

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wow, big development! 😂🙏

Latest season of VolcaKnowledge has dropped! Stop by to learn about the many (and surprising) ways that volcanoes affect us, no matter where you live. 🌋

www.youtube.com/channel/UCD9...

Scientists happened upon black goo on a ship — and discovered it was teeming with life | CNN A Great Lakes research vessel had goo leaking from its rudder shaft. Scientists later found it contained previously undiscovered microorganisms.

Oh check it out, @microbesheik.bsky.social found some cool microbes in "mysterious goo" from a ship's rudder shaft...and I got to talk about it 😂

www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/s...