How can animate life be formed from inanimate matter? It’s one of the most fascinating enigmas in science because, without this crucial first step, called abiogenesis, there would be no life on Earth.

Grab-and-go missions to asteroids have provided some of the most scientifically valuable samples since the Apollo ...

Long before life thrived in Earth’s oceans, the planet’s magnetic field became disorganized. Deep within the ancient rocks of Morocco, scientists have recovered one of the clearest records of that ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. We’ve pieced together a remarkably detailed timeline of ...

AFTER THE second world war, Leo Szilard, a pioneering nuclear physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project, decided to move into biology instead: life; not death. But there was a problem. As a ...

Geophysicists have modeled how Earth’s magnetic field could form even when its core was fully liquid. By removing the effects of viscosity in their simulation, they revealed a self-sustaining dynamo ...

Scientists have shown that Earth’s basic chemistry solidified within just three million years of the Solar System’s formation. Initially, the planet was barren and inhospitable, missing water and ...