News Briefs

By measuring iron isotopes, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have shown that our planet originally formed much faster than previously thought. This finding provides new insights on both planetary formation and the likelihood of water and life elsewhere in the universe.

Detection of ammonium salts may be a further indication that comet impacts may have made life on Earth possible.

New evidence has confirmed Australia’s Yarrabubba crater as the world’s oldest preserved impact structure - but did it thaw Earth and end an ice age?

Astronomers have identified where molecules containing phosphorus form, how this element is carried in comets, and how a particular molecule may have played a crucial role in starting life on our planet.

An international team has found sugars essential to life in meteorites. The new discovery adds to the growing list of biologically important compounds that have been found in meteorites, supporting the hypothesis that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of life’s ingredients.

Comets screaming through the atmosphere of early Earth at tens of thousands of miles per hour likely contained measurable amounts of protein-forming amino acids. Upon impact, these amino acids self-assembled into significantly larger nitrogen-containing aromatic structures that are likely constituents of polymeric biomaterials.

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, which was the first mission to involve a spacecraft following a comet on its journey around the Sun

A citizen scientist has discovered two stars with strange dips in their light that are probably hosts to ‘exocomets’, i.e. comets that orbit stars other than our Sun.

A team of international asteroid and comet experts now agree that ʻOumuamua, the first recorded interstellar visitor, has natural origins.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft completed its 1.2 billion-mile journey to arrive at the asteroid Bennu.