Icy asteroids?
Novel study of meteorites raises a swag of Earth-origin questions.
Stony meteorites known as carbonaceous chondrites show signs of liquid water no more than a million years ago, scient...
origins of life
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Conversation
Rethinking the origins of Homo sapiens
A profound shift underway in the science of human origins.
You might say it’s the ultimate prize of science, to discover when, where and why humans evolved. For a long time, th...
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A brief history of panspermia
The ancient history of a surprisingly resilient idea.
A recent journal paper argues that life did not originate on our planet, but arrived within comets and meteorites fal...
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“Nuclear geyser” may be origin of life
Conditions for life may have been a natural nuclear reactor.
Life may not have originated in the primordial soup of an ancient pond, according to scientists, but rather in a “nuc...
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Solar superstorms may have helped set stage for life
Huge solar storms that bombarded the early Earth with radiation could have kept the planet warm a...
Nasa Gigantic solar storms may have helped strip unwanted gases from the Earth’s atmosphere, while helping to se...
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Did extremophiles move habitats by hijacking virus DNA?
Origin-of-life debate continues, with genome sequencing providing tantalising clues.
Scraped from the near-boiling mud of a volcanic hot spring on the Italian island of Ischia, an ancient microbe is pro...
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Ingredients for life in a grain of salt from outer space
Meteorites that hit Earth in 1998 contained water and complex organic compounds.
A blue halite (salt-based) crystal from the Zag meteorite, which landed near Morocco in 1998. The crystal contains a ...
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Solution to a major origin-of-life mystery?
Chemistry and biology’s biggest chicken-or-egg conundrums.
Understanding the origin of life on earth is a daunting prospect. Piecing together events which took place around 3....
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Interstellar ice may hold the secret to life
Low energy electrons catalyse essential organic molecules.
Trying to understand the origins of life is perhaps the most difficult problem for chemists and biologists. The comp...
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The mathematics of the big picture
Rowena Ball is on the hunt for the origins of life itself.
Explosion and combustion. The origins of life on Earth. Humanity’s role in our own evolution. These are the kind of i...
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Bleach clue in origin of life hunt
New modelling adds weight to hydrothermal vents as the cradle of life on Earth.
A hydrothermal vent: could bleach be the critical element in the story of life? Credit: Universal History Archive/UIG...
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Life grew from tepid water, study finds
It’s not very majestic, but life on earth probably began in a warm little pond, reports Andrew Ma...
Fans of the classic rock music mockumentary Spinal Tap (1984) may recall a moment when the eponymous band’s hapless b...