Experiments show that lightning strikes can trigger the synthesis of basic organic molecules needed by living organisms.

"This is the story of Earth like you’ve never seen it before—from the first spark of life to prehistoric monsters to the rise of humans… and all the weird stuff in between." We live on a magnificently ...

They’re the building rocks of life. Analysis of debris from the nearly 5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu suggests the ingredients to life on Earth were present in the early days of our solar system, ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Researchers have ...

How did life begin on Earth? While scientists have theories, they don't yet fully understand the precise chemical steps that ...

Scientists believe they’ve found evidence that life on Earth is over a billion years older than anyone believed was realistic. New research used machine learning to scan ancient meteorites and fossils ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. We’ve pieced together a remarkably detailed timeline of ...

We’ve likely had at least one close encounter of the 3I kind before. Harvard scientist Avi Loeb claims that not only does 3I/ATLAS potentially have alien origins, but that this wouldn’t be the first ...

A new model increases the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, upending the decades-old “hard steps” theory that intelligent life was an incredibly improbable event on Earth. Are ...