Feature Stories

An adventurous science team returned from the deep Norwegian glacial fields, having tested an instrument which may be used to explore areas beneath the frozen surfaces of other worlds.

Cataloguing the taxonomy of an entire planet's history, a 'digital zoo' holds great promise for resolving century-old debates about how the Earth got to be such a rich spawning ground for life's diversity.

A scientific consortium of 4 universities and NASA is now trying to uncover the debris and sample the early solar system's unique chemistry.

A discovery by a NASA scientist of sugar and several related organic compounds in two carbonaceous meteorites provides the first evidence that another fundamental building block of life on Earth may have come from outer space.

Geochemists and microbiologists are delving into the details of extreme biochemistry deep within the Earth, where chemical and metabolic processes go at glacial pace, and life appears to be completely disconnected from the photosynthesis-based biological cycles that dominate surface life.

An 18-story undersea vent off the Atlantic, near what has been called the 'Lost City', has recently revealed itself as ripe with exotic microbial life.

When unusually warm dust was first discovered around a nearby star, called zeta Leporis, infrared astronomers began hunting in detail for the heat source.

Research done by scientists at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research offers insights into evolutionary origins of life.

Astronomers have made the first direct detection and chemical analysis of an atmosphere of a planet that exists outside our solar system.

In recent years, researchers discovered life also thrives in other, much colder, lightless deep-sea ecosystems besides hydrothermal vents.