Human beings have been at the center of ecological change on Earth for thousands of years. But as history shows, no species ...

Looking for molecular evidence of life on other worlds is tricky, but a test based on the reactivity of carbon compounds ...

"Life might actually survive being ejected from one planet and moving to another." ...

Scientists are trying to understand how complex life emerged on Earth about 2 billion years ago. Our microbial ancestors could be the key.

Beyond that, in the decades to come, we might be able to see the colours of an exoplanet’s surface, and determine if plant life might be present there. And then we can search for changes in a planet’s ...

Hardy bacteria in a lab survived pressures comparable to an asteroid strike on the red planet, suggesting a hypothetical scenario in which our planet was seeded with life.

Life on Earth may exist thanks to an incredible stroke of luck — a chemical sweet spot that most planets miss during their formation but ours managed to hit. A new study shows that Earth formed under ...

Tests conducted with tardigrades suggest that there is something in Martian dirt that dramatically reduces biological ...

Around 2.3 billion years ago, the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) marked a major turning point in Earth’s history. The increase ...

Here's a thought experiment that keeps planetary scientists awake at night. Strip every living thing from our planet, every bacterium, every blade of grass, every creature that has ever drawn breath ...

New evidence from rocks, molecules and machine learning is forcing scientists to redraw the opening chapters of Earth’s story, pushing the first stirrings of biology far closer to the planet’s violent ...