When the early Earth’s magma ocean crystallized 4.4 billion years ago, the deep mantle trapped an ocean’s worth of water, ...

Today, oceans cover about 70% of Earth’s surface. This stark contrast has long driven scientific interest in how water ...

One key component might be RNA, a molecular cousin of DNA found in every form of life on Earth, and now scientists say they ...

Earth's deep mantle stored enough water in rocks to equal one ocean during our planet's early molten days, helping explain ...

Earth should have lost its water long before life ever had a chance to appear. Bathed in a young Sun’s fierce radiation and wrapped in a global magma ocean, the planet’s surface looked more like a ...

Maybe the first life on Earth was part of an 'RNA world.' Artur Plawgo/Science Photo Library via Getty Images How life on Earth started has puzzled scientists for a long time. And it still does.

Some 4.6 billion years ago, Earth was nothing like the gentle blue planet we know today. Frequent and violent celestial ...

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, ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. New model suggests an ocean of magma formed within the first few hundred million years of Earth's ...

Four billion years ago, our then stripling sun radiated only 70 to 75 percent as much energy as it does today. Other things on Earth being equal, with so little energy reaching the planet’s surface, ...

IMAGE: A new study by CU-Boulder researchers indicates a thick organic haze shrouding Earth several billion years ago was similar to the one now hovering over Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. University ...

Scientists have discovered that complex life began evolving much earlier than traditional models suggested. Using an expanded ...