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Strange animals that get their energy from chemical reactions instead of the sun have been discovered at the bottom of ocean trenches up to 31,000 feet deep in the northwest Pacific between Russia and Alaska, a new study reports.

Scientists say the findings shed new light on the potential for life to exist in extreme environments using the chemical compound methane instead of sunlight. The animals were discovered by researchers using a human-crewed submersible vehicle.

Strange animals that get their energy from chemical reactions instead of the sun have been discovered at the bottom of ocean trenches up to 31,000 feet deep in the northwest Pacific between Russia and Alaska, a new study reports.

Scientists say the findings shed new light on the potential for life to exist in extreme environments using the chemical compound methane instead of sunlight. The animals were discovered by researchers using a human-crewed submersible vehicle.

"What makes our discovery groundbreaking is not just its greater depth – it's the astonishing abundance and diversity of chemosynthetic life we observed," said marine geochemist Mengran Du of the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the authors of the research published July 30 in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature.

"What makes our discovery groundbreaking is not just its greater depth – it's the astonishing abundance and diversity of chemosynthetic life we observed," said marine geochemist Mengran Du of the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the authors of the research published July 30 in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature.

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Jim Lovell, an astronaut best known as the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13, has died. He was 97.

NASA announced his death Friday and included this statement from his family: "We are enormously proud of his amazing life and career accomplishments, highlighted by his legendary leadership in pioneering human space flight. But, to all of us, he was Dad, Granddad, and the Leader of our family. Most importantly, he was our Hero. We will miss his unshakeable optimism, his sense of humor, and the way he made each of us feel we could do the impossible. He was truly one of a kind."

The Apollo 13 mission almost ended in catastrophe after an explosion crippled the spacecraft and took a herculean effort to bring home the three-astronaut crew.

Lovell's NASA career was peppered with firsts. His first flight — Gemini 7 in 1965 — set a space endurance record of almost 14 days. After Lovell commanded Gemini 12, he'd flown in space longer than any other person at that point. His next flight, Apollo 8, was the first time humans left Earth orbit.

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has gotten an up-close look at a headline-grabbing object known as 3I/ATLAS that has recently wandered into Earth's cosmic neighborhood from far away.

The image, which NASA bills as "the sharpest-ever picture" of an object most astronomers agree is almost definitely a comet, depicts the interstellar visitor that originated from outside our solar system from elsewhere in the Milky Way.

3I/ATLAS first made news in early July when scientists confirmed it as the third-ever observed interstellar interloper in our solar system. The space object further attracted the public's fascination again later in the month when a controversial astrophysicist from Harvard University began claiming it could be an alien spaceship.

What we definitely know about 3I/ATLAS is that it has been drifting through interstellar space for billions of years, gaining speed from the gravitational slingshot effect of passing countless stars and nebulas.

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Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers.

Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.”

Adee went on to lose 75% of his bees. “It’s almost depressingly sad,” he says. “If we have a similar situation this year – I sure hope we don’t – then we’re in a death spiral.”

It developed into the largest US honeybee die-off on record, with beekeepers losing on average 60% of their colonies, at a cost of $600m (£440m).

Scientists have been scrambling to discover what happened; now the culprits are emerging. A research paper published by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), though not yet peer-reviewed, has found nearly all colonies had contracted a bee virus spread by parasitic mites that appear to have developed resistance to the main chemicals used to control them.

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A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at the Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday.

The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit.

L ike many scientists, I came to the US as a young adult, driven by idealism and ambition. I arrived with all my belongings contained in two suitcases, and just enough cash to cover the first month’s rent on a small apartment. But I also had something of greater value: an offer to work and train in one of America’s top biomedical research laboratories, a chance to participate in the revolution that is modern biological science.

In the years that followed, I became an American scientist and raised an American family. Now, I lead a laboratory in one of the US’s great universities. I am a member of America’s National Academy of Sciences. From a scientist’s perspective, I have lived the American dream.

My story is not unusual. Many of the best scientists in the world are drawn to the US, joining many Americans who choose to build a career in science. This attraction to American science is because more so than any other country, America values unfettered scientific enquiry. In the US, scientists have greater resources to pursue their work, and scientists are an integral part of a culture that has innovation and dynamism at its core.

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