It may seem easy to distinguish whether something is alive or not. You are alive, as is your teacher, and the trees you see on your way to school. Your desk and chair are not alive, and neither are ...

New research suggests that essential components of life may assemble in interstellar space long before planets or oceans ...

In some ways, the origin of life is looking much less mystifying than it was a few decades ago. Researchers have figured out how some of the fundamental molecules needed for life can form via ...

Hydrogen cyanide, a toxic chemical, may have helped spark the chemistry that led to life. When frozen, it forms crystals with ...

The flowing of molten rocks through small cracks in the heart of volcanoes may have been a perfect environment to forge the building blocks of life on Earth. These chemicals—called biopolymers—are an ...

One of the most important molecules in living organisms has been synthesised from scratch under everyday conditions. The finding suggests that the chemical could have formed naturally early in our ...

Fossilized remnants of ancient carbon from the heart of South Africa's Mpumalanga province have just yielded the earliest chemical evidence yet of life on Earth. According to a new analysis using ...

One of humanity’s most profound questions is whether life exists beyond Earth — and if so, what forms it might take. For decades, the search for life has often focused on finding conditions similar to ...

New experiments reveal that protein precursors can form naturally in deep space under extreme cold and radiation. Scientists found that simple amino acids bond into peptides on interstellar dust, long ...

New method reveals chemical signs of early microbial life in ancient Earth rocks, showing photosynthesis evolved much earlier ...