The odds that the universe is bursting with life seem to be getting better all the time. Astronomers recently announced that there could be an astonishing 20 billion Earthlike planets in the Milky Way ...

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.

A breakthrough experiment, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers compelling support for ...

A giant impact on the early Earth could have brought the building blocks of RNA to our planet, which new research suggests ...

The earliest days of Earth held secrets that scientists are still trying to uncover. One of the greatest mysteries is how life began. A key part of the answer lies in a rare element: phosphorus. This ...

Researchers may have answered one of space science's long-running questions -- and it could change our understanding of how life began. Carbon-rich asteroids are abundant in space yet make up less ...

A team of researchers studied the properties of membranes to understand how these cellular structures influenced the chemistry of life on Earth as it began. How life arose remains a looming question ...

It is the ultimate mystery of biology: How did life begin? A team of Harvard scientists has brought us closer to an answer by creating artificial cell-like chemical systems that simulate metabolism, ...