Did life have hellish origins? Carbon with an organic-like signature has been discovered sealed within a crystal that formed during an interval of Earth’s history named after Hades, the underworld of Greek mythology. The find predates other evidence of life by 300 million years. Image: Image Editor
Read More
Water covers around 70 per cent of our planet’s surface. It makes up 60 per cent of our body weight. Without a supply of the stuff, very few living things can survive for long. But, perhaps surprisingly, water is bad news for life. Was it conspicuously absent at the dawn of life on Earth? Image: szeke
Read More
Earth may have become the blue planet just 200 million years after it formed, making it a welcoming home for life hundreds of millions of years earlier than we thought. Image: Kevin Gill
Read More
Where on Earth is the cradle of life? The widespread view is that life began in the oceans, in the water that surrounds deep-sea hydrothermal vents. But that story is being challenged by new evidence that life began on land, which is deepening a rift between origin-of-life biologists. Image: Anna S. Karyagina
Read More
