Thriving communities that derive their energy from chemical reactions have been discovered at the bottom of deep trenches in the northwest Pacific Ocean. The presence of these chemosynthetic ecosystems challenges long-standing assumptions about life’s potential at extreme depths and the intricate carbon cycle of the deep ocean.

‘Metalasers’ have been developed using metasurfaces comprising nanodisks, each with an off-centre hole. By changing the rotation angle of the nanodisks’ holes, the wavefront of the metalaser’s emission can be modified to generate arbitrarily shaped beam profiles, including focal spots, vortices and holograms, with notably low levels of ‘speckle’ noise.

Mars has had periods of potential habitability, seen in its geological record of surface water and shallow groundwater. Models that incorporate feedback between carbon sequestration, atmospheric pressure and temperature — backed by discoveries of carbonates by NASA’s Curiosity rover — suggest that this intermittent habitability could have arisen through self-regulating feedback loops on the planet’s surface.

A cellular atlas for a small, fast-reproducing primate could set the stage for scientists to use it as a model organism that has more human relevance than rodents.