Cyanobacteria, as they still exist today, were the first organisms to carry out photosynthesis and release oxygen. Produced in primeval oceans about 2.5 billion years ago, this oxygen accumulated in ...

Samples from the asteroid Bennu hint that some of life’s ingredients were forming long before Earth existed. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned dust a.

A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed ...

Even when Earth was locked in its most extreme deep freeze, the planet’s climate may not have been as silent and still as ...

Experiments reveal that unsaturated lipid membranes promote vesicle fusion and DNA retention during freeze–thaw cycles, highlighting icy environments as potential drivers of protocell evolution. Today ...

When the supercontinent Pangea began to fragment around 200 million years ago during the Early Jurassic, it reshaped the face of the planet. Vast new oceans opened, continents drifted apart and the ...

Meltwater flows down from surrounding mountains. This view is from New Zealand. Sediment and water movement create the branching shapes. The most attractive nations around the world Joy Behar reveals ...

Ancient enzymes show life’s nitrogen signal stayed unchanged for billions of years, helping scientists read early Earth.

Update: NASA announced Feb. 3 that it is aiming to launch the Artemis II mission in March 2026. This week, four U.S. astronauts are slated to begin their history-making journey to the moon and back.

New study reveals that the Earth's mantle was not as hot when Pangaea began to break apart millions of years ago.

A layer of rock just 520 million years old sat directly on top of ancient rock dating back 1.4 to 1.8 billion years.