Oceans churned with lava. Air filled thick with smoke. Asteroids stormed down incessantly. Life during the Hadean Eon four billion years ago was a struggle, and yet that was when it began. 1,2 With no ...

In a new book, astrophysicist Mario Livio describes how the existence of life on Earth can be traced back to an RNA-based “protocell.” The following is an excerpt from Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest ...

Few questions have captivated humankind more than the origin of life on Earth. How did the first living cells come to exist? How did these early protocells develop the structural membranes necessary ...

Earth’s chemical energy powered early life through ‘the most revolutionary idea in biology since Darwin’ For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a ‘primordial soup’ of organic ...