Earth is so far the only known planet on which life exists—with liquid water and a stable atmosphere. However, the conditions were not conducive to life when it formed. The gas-dust cloud from which ...

Life on Earth may exist thanks to an incredible stroke of luck — a chemical sweet spot that most planets miss during their formation but ours managed to hit. A new study shows that Earth formed under ...

Scientists are sharpening their forecasts for how long Earth can remain a comfortable home for complex organisms, and the latest work points to a much earlier cutoff than the classic textbook ...

How did Earth, alone among the solar system's rocky planets, become the home for life? How, among all this frigid lifelessness, did our planet become warm, hospitable, and life-sustaining? The answer ...

For over half a billion years, Earth’s magnetic field has risen and fallen in sync with oxygen levels in the atmosphere, and scientists are finally uncovering why. A NASA-led study reveals a striking ...

In a remote desert, scientists have discovered one of Earth’s oldest asteroid impacts. It dates to well over a billion years ago, to a time when our planet was inhabited solely by single-celled life.

In the tantalizing quest to find extraterrestrial life beyond our own solar system, or at least beyond Earth, we often forget the myriad ways in which life has evolved within our own planet’s deep ...

The question of when life began on Earth is as old as human culture. “It’s one of these fundamental human questions: When did life appear on Earth?” said Professor Martin Whitehouse of the Swedish ...

Grab-and-go missions to asteroids have provided some of the most scientifically valuable samples since the Apollo missions—and they’re shaking up the search for life beyond Earth. The OSIRIS-REx ...