Living organisms need nitrogen as a central building block for protein formation, for example. However, although our atmosphere contains plenty of nitrogen, neither humans nor the vast majority of ...

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 ...

We know Earth formed roughly 4.54 billion years ago and that the first single cell lifeforms were present roughly 1 billion years after that. What we don’t know is what triggered the process that ...

Researchers recreated conditions from billions of years ago and found that Earth’s young atmosphere could make key molecules linked to life. These sulfur-rich compounds, including certain amino acids, ...

Researchers uncovered that trace compounds like nickel and urea may have delayed Earth’s oxygenation for millions of years. Experiments mimicking early Earth revealed how their concentrations ...

For decades, scientists believed that a vast stretch of Earth’s early history unfolded under stable and uneventful conditions. That assumption is now being challenged by an extraordinary discovery ...

Two enormous structures that sit at the border between the Earth’s mantle and its core have puzzled scientists for decades, defying reigning theories of how our planet came to be. In a new study ...

Over 4.6 billion years ago, Earth took shape from a spinning cloud of dust and gas surrounding the young sun. Tiny particles within this cloud collided and clumped together, driven by gravity and ...