Earth

Have ever wondered how homing pigeons make round trips without GPS, or how pregnant sea turtles find the same beach on which they were born decades earlier to lay their own eggs?

For much of its existence, Earth has been inhabited. But if researchers remotely analyzed the atmosphere of that young Earth, they might have missed the evidence for life.

To study the history of life on Earth and look for it beyond our planet, scientists in the field of astrobiology look for signs called “biosignatures". By looking at what life on Earth was like millions and even billions of years ago, astrobiologists can make

By mimicking rocky seafloor chimneys in the lab, scientists have produced new evidence that these features could have provided the right ingredients to kick-start life.

Because of the importance of water to sustain life, the question of the origin of water on Earth is primordial. A major challenge in investigating this question is that Earth has lost all the traces of its formation since it is an active planet.

Cornell astronomers have created five models representing key points from our planet’s evolution, like chemical snapshots through Earth’s own geologic epochs.

A recent study is contributing to our understanding of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, which occurred some 66 million years ago. This event is possibly best known for wiping out the dinosaurs, and is one of the most well-studied mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

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.

Research suggests that sulfur in the oceans may not have played as large a role as expected in delaying the evolution of more complex life.

Research team explores how fundamental features of genome affects organism's ability to thrive in an extreme environment on Earth and beyond.