Hale-Bopp originated in the Oort Cloud, a theoretical shell of icy planetesimals surrounding the sun in the outer reaches of ...

Think of it this way: only around 10,000 decently sized meteorites slam into Earth per year. Meanwhile, the planet is ...

About 4.6 billion years ago, the Solar System formed from a cloud of dust and gas collapsing in on itself due to gravity. The Sun, planets, and eventually Earth formed out of the cloud. But when did ...

Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than ...

Study warns that humans may be driving Earth toward a sixth mass extinction. The research shows species loss, but the future ...

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 ...

It’s one of the most longstanding questions in biology: how did life first arise? Research on the topic abounds, but there’s no one accepted answer. And according to one new paper, the chances that ...

Microbes high in Earth’s stratosphere produce pigments to protect them from UV light – so similar molecules could be ...

Salt is an essential nutrient for the human body. But hundreds of millions of years before the first humans, salt minerals ...

Interstellar dust like that seen in the Carina Nebula may have supplied some of Earth's amino acids. Earlier studies have revealed high concentrations of these organic materials in asteroids and ...