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Origin Of Life
A big open question in 21st-century science is how life began here on Earth. The metabolism-first scenario just might be the best one.
Science has assembled an incredible story outlining our Universe's whole history. Despite its unrivaled success, 9 profound gaps remain.
The fear of unleashing forces beyond control has haunted science for centuries.
Our Earthbound definitions of life could leave us blind to the Universe’s strangest forms.
Somewhere, at some point in the history of our Universe, life arose. We're evidence of that here on Earth, but many big puzzles remain.
As the closest icy ocean world to
Earth, Ceres may be a promising candidate in the search for signs of ancient life.
A Cambridge-based team claims to find molecules on an exoplanet that are only produced by life on Earth. Don't fall for the unfounded hype.
Life may have arisen far earlier — and more rapidly — than previously thought.
How did life on Earth begin? Is there life on other worlds? An answer to either question will reflect heavily on the other.
It's deceptively tricky to distinguish living systems from non-living systems. Physics may be key to solving the problem.
In "Life As No One Knows It," Sara Imari Walker explains why the key distinction between life and other kinds of "things" is how life uses information.
"What modern science has taught us is that life is not a property of matter."
The Moon is the most likely place for evidence from the dawn of life on Earth to be preserved in cold storage.
In a recent paper, biologists outlined a three-part hypothesis for how all life as we know it began.
Although early Earth was a molten hellscape, once it cooled, life arose almost immediately. That original chain of life remains unbroken.
If there’s life lurking on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, could our instruments even detect it?
Life became a possibility in the Universe as soon as the raw ingredients were present. But living, inhabited worlds required a bit more.
Earth wasn't created until more than 9 billion years after the Big Bang. In some lucky places, life could have arisen almost right away.
From how life emerged on Earth to why we dream, these unanswered questions continue to perplex scientists.
Scientists agree that eons ago, a bacterium took up residence inside another cell and became its powerhouse, the mitochondrion. But there are competing theories about the birth of other organelles such as the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum.
We don’t need to think about what life is made of but rather what it does.
There's an entire Universe out there. So, with all that space, all those planets, and all those chances at life, why do we all live here?
Origin of life studies have always focused on a set of strict environments that could give rise to life. Ante-life opens new possibilities.
In the beginning, genes weren't needed.
John Templeton Foundation
The road to intelligent life is a series of hard steps.
The answer to the age-old philosophical question of whether there is meaning in the Universe may ultimately rest upon the power of information.
John Templeton Foundation
There might be a hard limit to our knowledge of the Universe.
In the early 20th century, a young biochemist named Alexander Oparin set out to connect “the world of the living” to “the world of the dead.”
Bathybius haeckelii was briefly thought to be the link between inorganic matter and organic life.
