Scientists have solved the mystery of how the building blocks of life formed on a 4.6–billion–year–old asteroid, and it could rewrite our own origin story. In 2023, NASA's OSIRIS–REx mission recovered ...

Learn how galactic archaeology uses chemical clues to uncover how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years.

Assembly Theory is a way to understand how the complexity of life emerged through a mechanism of “self-assembly.” It could explain how life formed on Earth—or other planets—via the shortest path to ...

The tectonic plates are among the most powerful forces on Earth, exerting tremendous influence over every single life that unfolds on this planet. They are both creators and destroyers, capable of ...

Amino acids, the building blocks necessary for life, were previously found in samples of 4.6-billion-year-old rocks from an asteroid called Bennu, delivered to Earth in 2023 by NASA's OSIRIS-REx ...

Challenging long-held assumptions, Aarhus University researchers have demonstrated that the protein building blocks essential for life as we know it can form readily in space. This discovery, ...

How life begins remains an unsolved question. One key component might be RNA, a molecular cousin of DNA found in every form of life on Earth, and now scientists say they have shown how it could have ...

Surface-bound gels may have provided the structure and chemistry for life to take root on Earth, and perhaps beyond How did life begin? An international team of researchers from Japan, Malaysia, the ...

A graphical representation of glycine on a surface in the interstellar medium bombarded by cosmic rays to produce peptides, the building block of proteins. Challenging long-held assumptions, Aarhus ...