How life on Earth came into existence is still one of the greatest mysteries in science but new research into the "deep biosphere" indicates that the first replicating life-forms on the planet may have originated deep underground rather than, as commonly believed, on the surface.

Scientists have now discovered microbes living and reproducing as deep as 5km (3.1 miles) below ground and studies have shown that they are likely to have survived in complete isolation from the surface biosphere for millions and perhaps even billions of years.

One of the latest studies into the deep biosphere has found that these microbes form a distinct subsurface community of genetically similar individuals despite living on opposite sides of the world. This global similarity of such an isolated life-form suggests that they may have evolved directly from a common ancestor that lived as long ago at the period when life on earth originated, some 3.5 billion years ago.

An increasing number of researchers believe that life could have first got going in the tiny cracks of underground rocks, fuelled not by the energy of sunlight but by chemical fuel in the form of hydrogen and methane which can be produced in certain types of rock under high temperatures and pressures.

Geologists at Brigham Young University have discovered what may be the world's largest "super" volcano that erupted in Utah's own backyard. While there are a variety of volcanoes that blast away in different ways, super volcanic eruptions are the biggest that collapse into large calderas. Yellowstone Park is the remains of one of those calderas and it's still very much alive and active.

But, geologists think they may have found an equally as big if not bigger super volcano, one that shook up western Utah and eastern Nevada 30 million years ago. The eruption is hardly visible to the naked eye now, but underneath and in surrounding formations, the evidence was waiting to be uncovered.

"As far as we know, the Wah Wah Springs eruption is the largest known explosive volcanic eruption," said BYU professor of geology Eric Christiansen.

Marcus Munafò just doesn't believe some of the stuff he sees in journals - especially in psychological sciences, which have come under pressure to prove that studies in the field can be replicated. "Too often my gut feeling is 'surely this can't be right'", says Munafò, who is an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK.

But when Munafò peer reviews such studies before they are published, he is often instructed not to express such personal opinions - something he finds frustrating. Instead, peer reviewers may be asked to stick to an objective assessment of whether a paper's methods look sound. And this, Munafò thinks, can be damaging: in a contentious field, a flurry of methodologically 'sound' results that support one explanation - though not conclusively - may create a self-fuelling illusion of consensus, preventing researchers from accurately assessing scientific truth.

Writing today in Nature¹, Munafò and his collaborators assert that they can back up their concerns about peer review using cold mathematical logic. By modelling how scientific knowledge is disseminated through peer review and publication, they suggest that scientists who bring their own judgement to the review process can slow or reverse a misleading rush to consensus after a sequence of one-sided studies in a field. Yet other researchers say that the authors' model is too unrealistic to draw any real-world lessons about peer review.

In November, NASA released some incredible composite photographs of Saturn taken from the Cassini spacecraft. In some of the images, you can see streams of liquid erupting from the planet.

This week, NASA has topped that with its most detailed movie of the "hexagon jet stream" erupting from the ringed planet, creating a giant storm that might be hundreds of years old.

The movie shows a complete view of the top of Saturn. And in the middle of it all is the hexagon, a giant 20,000-mile-wide jet stream of winds racing at 200 mph.

It's a storm that NASA says truly stands alone in the entire solar system.

"The hexagon is just a current of air, and weather features out there that share similarities to this are notoriously turbulent and unstable," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team in Pasadena, Calif. "A hurricane on Earth typically lasts a week, but this has been here for decades - and who knows - maybe centuries."

New research suggests geological anomalies are not Native American burial sites but are created by gophers over hundreds of years.

Scientists claim to have solved the mystery behind Mima mounds - large bubble wrap like geological anomalies which bulge out of the ground - that have puzzled experts for centuries.

The source of this landscape has led to a range of hypotheses from earthquakes and floods to Native American burial sites.

New research suggests tiny burrowing animals such as gophers are their constructors but it takes the creatures hundreds of years to make them. The natural mounds, which are common in North America, can number in the millions.

The lead researcher Dr Manny Gabet, of San Jose State University, told BBC News: "The big mystery surrounding Mima mounds is that, until now, nobody really knew how they formed.

Despite aging being one the hottest topic in the media recently, scientists have no coherent explanation for it. New demographic data on humans, animals and plants for the first time unveil such an extraordinary diversity of aging processes that no existing evolutionary theory can account for. Both life spans and mortalities vary from species to species. The fact that the probability of dying rises with age applies to humans, but is not principally true. This is shown by a catalogue of 46 species with their respective mortality and fertility rates, which has now been published in the science journal Nature. It is the result of a long-term data collection project led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany, and at the Max-Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging (MaxO) in Odense, Denmark.

Not only are previous explanations unable to deal with life spans ranging from a few days (fruit fly), to decades (humans), to centuries (hydra), but they are also unable to account for variations in the death rate. Common theories assert that the probability of dying rises with age, as for humans. However, the researchers cataloged species such as the white mangrove and the desert tortoise whose probability of dying actually decreases with age. In addition, fertility periods of some species also challenge common theories.

Previous attempts to explain aging claim that creatures only invest in self-preservation until they have reproduced successfully and raised their offspring. Following this line of reasoning, when the end of the fertility period approaches, the body should start to decay -- which is known as senescence, or aging.

For humans this is only partly true. According to the Nature study, mortality of modern Japanese women rises constantly after childhood. But contradictorily, humans still live for a long time after fertility has ceased. Today, many people stay healthy until they are grandparents and their probability of dying is correspondingly small. Only at advanced ages is mortality growing rapidly. For example, in Japanese women 100 years old, mortality reaches more than 20 times their lifetime average.

This makes humans a real oddity. No other species in the researcher's catalogue has a mortality curve which rises that sharply. Even among other mammals, death rates reach no more than five times the lifetime average. Why evolution developed such big differences is a mystery to Biologists.

The U.S. Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane is nearing a major milestone - one year of travel in Earth orbit, performing duties in support of long-term space objectives.

The unmanned X-37B spacecraft - flying a mission known as Orbital Test Vehicle 3 (OTV-3) - launched into space atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 11, 2012. What payloads the space plane is toting and the overall mission goals on its confidential cruise are classified.

But it is known that the OTV-3 mission signals a milestone for the X-37B program.

This same vehicle was flown on the X-37B program's inaugural flight back in 2010. That OTV-1 mission lasted nearly 225 days in orbit, gliding back to Earth on autopilot over the Pacific Ocean and touching down at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

An OTV-2 mission, which used a different X-37B space plane, was lofted in 2011. That vehicle flew for 469 days, more than doubling its sister ship's space stay, concluding its mission by also making a Vandenberg landing.

Americans from Buzz Aldrin to president Barack Obama say it's a waste of time to put men back on the moon -- so why are foreign countries so eager to take that one small step?

While several private American companies are planning robotic missions to the moon, China launched a man-sized robotic scout to the moon on Monday. The country's recent manned missions and efforts to build a new space base suggest a future manned mission to the moon, though why is an open question. Speculation has run from the desire to build a military missile base -- a Death Star of sorts -- to national pride to simple economics.

The answer may be far simpler: The moon is "easy" to get to.

In November 2013, skywatchers around the world eagerly awaited the approach of Comet ISON. Dubbed the "Comet of the Century" by several in the media, some astronomers had predicted a stupendous cometary display as Comet ISON approached its perihelion. The comet was also the subject of countless bizarre speculations. However, despite the heightened expectations, ISON ultimately proved to be somewhat of a fizzle.

Skywatchers worldwide are readying to view the robust, reliable Geminid meteors later this week. But you might want to head outdoors early - tonight, in fact - based on some interesting news.

Meteor specialist Peter Brown (University of Western Ontario) reports that the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar has recorded an outburst from the Andromedid meteors in the past 24 hours. Moreover, he reports, "It is not clear if the peak of the outburst has been reached or if activity may continue to increase."

You'd be forgiven if you've never heard of the Andromedids, let alone that they'd be worth watching. This is a stream of debris shed by the now-defunct periodic Comet Biela, which was discovered three times: in 1772, 1805, and 1826. In 1846 this curious interloper returned as two comets traveling side by side.