All life on Earth comes from one single ancestor. And it's so much older than we thought. All life on Earth can be traced ...

The nitrogen in the gum was found to be in nitrogen heterocycles, which are the building blocks of nucleobases in DNA and RNA ...

Earth’s origin story has always had missing pages, from the chemistry of its first crust to the ingredients that seeded life.

Surface-bound gels may have offered the structure and chemistry needed for life to take hold on Earth—and possibly elsewhere.

Two enormous structures that sit at the border between the Earth’s mantle and its core have puzzled scientists for decades, defying reigning theories of how our planet came to be. In a new study ...

Scientist have concluded water did not arrive as early during Earth's formation as previously thought, an insight that bears directly on the question of when life originated on the planet. The finding ...

Earth is so far the only known planet on which life exists—with liquid water and a stable atmosphere. However, the conditions were not conducive to life when it formed. The gas-dust cloud from which ...

A recent study investigates how polyester microdroplets, potential precursors to modern cells, could form under realistic early Earth conditions. Researchers pushed these conditions to the limits, ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The scientific community is largely divided into two camps regarding ...

"We are really trying to understand how far we can go, chemically, toward larger biological molecules and what environments are needed to form them." Researchers have created a "fingerprint" of a ...

The results indicate that the elements essential for life formed within extreme, highly energetic environments deep inside ...

Polyester microdroplets, possible precursors to life, were formed from alpha-hydroxy acids (αHAs) in early Earth-like conditions even at low reaction volume, low reactant concentrations, and/or high ...