A microscopic marine alga is thriving in the North Atlantic to an extent that defies scientific predictions, suggesting swift environmental change as a result of carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean.

Scientists have for the first time witnessed a black hole swallow a star and then quickly eject a flare of stellar debris moving at nearly light speed.

“Diamond formation in the deep Earth—the very deep Earth—may be a more common process than we thought,” says Johns Hopkins University geochemist Dimitri A. Sverjensky.