Hydrogen peroxide — commonly used as hair bleach — may have provided the energy source for the development of life on Earth, two applied mathematicians have found. The heat from […]
Origin & Evolution of Life
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life, Press Release
Finding the Origins of Life in a Drying Puddle
Anyone who’s ever noticed a water puddle drying in the sun has seen an environment that may have driven the type of chemical reactions that scientists believe were critical to […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release
Meteoritic Abundances of Nucleobases and Potential Reaction Pathways
Carbonaceous chondrites are a class of meteorite known for having a high content of water and organics. In this study, abundances of the nucleobases, i.e., the building blocks of RNA […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Water Was Plentiful in the Early Universe
Astronomers have long held that water — two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom — was a relative latecomer to the universe. They believed that any element heavier than helium […]
Posted inGenomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release
Missing Link in the Evolution of Complex Cells Discovered
Together with colleagues from Uppsala University in Sweden and the University of Vienna in Austria, Steffen Leth Jrgensen from the Centre for Geobiology at the University of Bergen (UiB) has […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Origin & Evolution of Life
A Hot Start to the Origin of Life?
DNA is synonymous with life, but where did it originate? One way to answer this question is to try to recreate the conditions that formed DNA’s molecular precursors. These precursors […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Our Ocean's Cosmic Origin
A new study published in Science looks beyond the question of whether Earth’s oceans can be traced to comets or other objects from space, and instead asks the question: where […]
Posted inBiochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release
New Study Hints at Spontaneous Appearance of Primordial DNA
The self-organization properties of DNA-like molecular fragments four billion years ago may have guided their own growth into repeating chemical chains long enough to act as a basis for primitive […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life, Press Release
The Case for a Hot Archean Climate and its Implications to the History of the Biosphere
The oxygen isotope record in sedimentary chert and the compelling case for a near constant isotopic oxygen composition of seawater over geologic time support thermophilic surface temperatures prevailing in the […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life, Titan
Life Not As We Know It Is Possible on Saturn's Moon Titan
A new type of methane-based, oxygen-free life form that can metabolize and reproduce similar to life on Earth has been modeled by a team of Cornell University researchers. Taking a […]