A doctoral student recreated a tiny piece of the universe in a bottle to investigate the chemistry that led to life on Earth.

A 13-atom molecule containing sulfur has been discovered in interstellar space for the first time, providing insight into the origins of the chemistry of life.

In a peer-reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.” The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the single life form that branched into ...

The complex building blocks of life can form spontaneously in space, a new lab experiment shows.

The origin of life on Earth has been mulled over by scientists for centuries. We now know that life’s building blocks are RNA, amino acids, and cells. But if life originated from the primordial ooze ...

In many submerged regions, murky mud shelters strange life-forms that seem to be the key to one of the biggest mysteries of life on Earth. These creatures belong to a domain of life called the archaea ...

In a new book, astrophysicist Mario Livio describes how the existence of life on Earth can be traced back to an RNA-based “protocell.” The following is an excerpt from Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest ...

On May 7, 1981, influential physicist Richard Feynman gave a keynote speech at Caltech. Feynman opened his talk by politely rejecting the very notion of a keynote speech, instead saying that he had ...