With recent observations confirming exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs, there is growing interest in exploring and quantifying the habitability of temperate rocky planets around white dwarfs.
An international team of scientists recently published a study highlighting the potential role of iron sulfides in the formation of life in early Earth’s terrestrial hot springs. According to the […]
Autocatalytic reactions driving the self-assembly of biological polymers are important for the origin of life, yet few experimental examples of such reactions exist.
The early co-evolution of RNA and peptides is at the core of the RNA-peptide world hypothesis. Recent studies suggest that nucleotides and amino acids could have formed and polymerised non-enzymatically […]
Amino acids have been detected in some meteorites and are readily synthesized in prebiotic experiments. These molecules may have been precursors of oligomers and polymers in the early Earth.
One way in which we can attempt to relate chemical pathways to geochemical environments is by studying the kinetics of a given sequence of reactions and identifying the conditions under […]
Earth is expected to have acquired a reduced proto-atmosphere enriched in H2 and CH4 through the accretion of building blocks that contain metallic Fe and/or the gravitational trapping of surrounding […]
Creating a living system from nonliving matter is a great challenge in chemistry and biophysics. The early history of life can provide inspiration from the idea of the prebiotic “RNA […]
The mineral schreibersite, e.g., Fe3P, is commonly found in iron-rich meteorites and could have served as an abiotic phosphorus source for prebiotic chemistry.
The Strytan Hydrothermal Field (SHF) in basaltic terrain in Iceland is one of the extant alkaline submarine hydrothermal vent systems favoured as analogues for where life on Earth may have […]
