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Evolutionary Biology
Most of the Moon’s effects on Earth are small and imperceptible. But for the grunion, it’s absolutely essential. Although it’s the closest astronomical body to Earth, the Moon is still […]
The cosmic story of us wasn’t inevitable, but the culmination of many chance events. By the time our planet was four billion years old, the rise of large plants and animals […]
The history of life on Earth took many meandering turns before it gave rise to us. When Earth first formed, all the raw ingredients for life — atoms, molecules, a potentially habitable planet […]
We’re a long way from the beginnings of life on Earth. Here’s the key to how we got there. The Universe was already two-thirds of its present age by the time […]
Earth wasn’t the only potentially habitable planet in the early Solar System. What happened to Mars? If you could travel back in time to the early stages of the Solar System, […]
The ‘giant impact’ that led to Earth might not have been so giant, after all. A little over 4.5 billion years ago, our Solar System began to form. Somewhere in the […]
The cosmic story of us, from before the Big Bang until today, is a story that all of us share. Enjoy it, in just 200 words. In the beginning, there was […]
Planets can ‘discover’ nuclear power on their own, naturally, without any intelligence. Earth did it 1.7 billion years before humans. If you were hunting for alien intelligence, looking for a surefire […]
How ‘special’ are we for life to have survived and thrived the way it did? While there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, many with Earth-sized planets at […]
The ingredients for life are everywhere, but so far the only life we know of comes from Earth. Here’s how that might change. Ever since human beings first turned our eyes […]
In the aftermath of everything we’ve learned about what’s in the Universe, we can make much better estimates of how many alien civilizations are out there. In 1961, scientist Frank Drake […]
Have you heard that life is unlikely around low-mass, red dwarf stars? It might be time to rethink that flawed conclusion. “Laws of nature mixed with evolutionary/historical contingencies allow for […]