Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER
Deep-sea discovery challenges theories of oxygen as an alien life marker
ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT explore how metal nodules producing oxygen on the ocean floor complicate the search for extraterrestrial life and our understanding of Earth's early atmosphere
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS: Field of polymetallic nodules of type C in the north equatorial Pacific, photo taken from the submarine Nautile - NODINAUT campaign. The formations can be found as deep as 20,000 feet below the ocean's surface
[Philweb/CC] 
A judge in a German court ruled that the ban activity imposed on renowned Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today
Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON
SOME astrophysicists try to understand the composition of planets that go round other stars — so-called “exoplanets.” They do so by looking at how light from the star is absorbed as the planet orbits around it, which allows them to find out the compounds that make up the planet’s atmosphere.
The technique allows scientists to understand something about these distant planets, though they are separated by many light years.
Some scientists believe that by identifying specific molecules in the atmospheres of these planets, we will be able to observe the signature of life. These signatures would be “biomarkers” — molecules that can’t be produced by simple chemistry, but can only be made by living organisms.
The difficulty in assessing these molecules and the remoteness of the planets make others sceptical that any biomarker would, by itself, ever be enough to categorically say that life exists.
More from this author
What’s behind the stubborn gender gap in Stem disciplines ask ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT in their column Science and Society
While politicians condemned fascist bombing of Spanish civilians in 1937, they ignored identical RAF tactics across the colonies. Today’s aerial warfare continues this pattern of applying different moral standards based on geography and race, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The distinction between domestic and military drones is more theoretical than practical, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Nature's self-reconstruction is both intriguing and beneficial and as such merits human protection, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
