“The ‘quantum properties of the neutrino’ stuff is a little bit of the Wild West at the moment,” says nuclear physicist Kyle Leach of Colorado School of Mines in Golden. “We’re still trying to figure it out.”

These less-than-ideal conditions should make them hostile to life. “If I were a microbe, I wouldn’t want to live in the cold, dark depths where I haven’t seen the sun or a new nutrient in thousands of years,” says Ryan Venturelli, a paleoglaciologist ....

Scientists would love to know whether that flood actually passed through this cavern. “Connecting this upstream to the lake system would be extremely cool,” says Matthew Siegfried, a glaciologist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, who ....

“It’s not surprising at all that as you get [dirt] that’s more and more accurate, closer to Mars, that it gets harder and harder for plants to grow in it,” says planetary scientist Kevin Cannon of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo., who ....