Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Your blood's natural limit to how much oxygen it can hold means you can't stockpile it. Lisa520/E+ via Getty Images You need to ...

We think of oxygen as life, sustenance, a literal breath of fresh air. But it's actually a very reactive element. Anyone who's burned a log has witnessed this firsthand. So why do so many life-forms ...

Microscopic ocean algae produce a huge share of Earth’s oxygen—but they need iron to do it. New field research shows that when iron is scarce, phytoplankton waste energy and photosynthesis falters.

Think you can beat the current world record? Before you try, here's what happens when you hold your breath.

Watching a fish glide through water gives the impression that it moves in a world foreign to ours. But if we need air to live, how do these animals manage to breathe beneath the surface, where our ...

A complex web of interactions between geological features including volcanoes, subsurface mantle, oceans and the atmosphere created the chemical mixture necessary for early life to oxygenate our ...

There is nothing more fundamental to humans than the availability of oxygen. We give little thought to the oxygen we need, we just breathe, but where does it come from? To shed light on this, ...

A rapid increase in oxygen levels about 2.5 billion years ago was linked to the evolution of photosynthetic organisms, but geological factors likely started this process. Earth’s early atmosphere was ...