One debate about the origin of life on Earth concerns whether it formed around deep-sea hydrothermal vents or in scars left behind by an asteroid impact. A new review article analyzes recent research ...

Scientists have pushed back LUCA’s origin by hundreds of millions of years.

Asteroid impacts may have helped kick-start life on Earth by creating hot, chemical-rich environments ideal for early biology. These impact-generated hydrothermal systems could have lasted thousands ...

How did life begin on Earth? While scientists have theories, they don’t yet fully understand the precise chemical steps that led to biology, or when the first primitive life forms appeared. But what ...

Earth may have won a cosmic chemistry lottery. Researchers found that during the planet’s earliest formation, oxygen had to be in an extremely narrow “Goldilocks zone” for two life-essential elements, ...

Manganese dioxide can convert amino acids into hydrogen cyanide (HCN) without requiring methane, a finding that solves a long ...

How did life begin on Earth? While scientists have theories, they don’t yet fully understand the precise chemical steps that led to biology or when the first primitive life forms appeared. But what if ...