On the cold, dark ocean floor, layered metallic lumps might be producing oxygen without photosynthetic life.

The team decided this can't be right

and they didn't believe their own data for a long time.

It's Wednesday, August 7th, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm Cyfry producer Kathleen Davis. Coming up

how potato-sized objects called polymetallic nodules, millions of years old, might be an unseen source of oxygen for the

deep ocean, and what that might mean for the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

But first, how a trick of physics lets turkey vultures

soar sky high, as high as some airplanes. Here's guest host Charles Berquist.

If you've ever taken a trip to a higher altitude, you know that the air is thinner up there.

And if you're not used to it, you might want to take it easy.

Maybe don't plan to go running the first day you arrive in the mountains.

That thinner air also makes it more difficult to fly, but it turns out that a bird, the

turkey vulture, has a way of dealing with that problem.

Here to explain as Dr Jonathan Rader, a postdoctoral research

associate in biology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and an author of a report on this research

published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Rader.

Hi Charles, thank you.

It's lovely to be here with you today.

Thanks for being here.

So for listeners who may not be totally up on their birds, what is a turkey vulture? These are not small birds.

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