Houchin and his colleagues studied dozens of zircon crystals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. These are the oldest ...

Around 2.3 billion years ago, the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) marked a major turning point in Earth’s history. The increase ...

There are many open questions about how our planet formed 4.55 billion years ago: When did plate tectonics start? When did the Earth's mantle begin to vigorously circulate in a process called ...

Four billion years ago, our then stripling sun radiated only 70 to 75 percent as much energy as it does today. Other things on Earth being equal, with so little energy reaching the planet’s surface, ...

One broken piece of quartz in a physics lab could shed light on the history of life on Earth and the search for other habitable worlds. Today, most life as we know it depends on oxygen. Specifically, ...

Water has made the Earth the planet that it is—a planet known for its blue oceans. Water shapes the land through erosion and is fundamental to Earth’s ability to support life. But we have a hard time ...

Geologists from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have made a breakthrough in understanding how Earth's early continents formed during the Archean time, more than 2.5 billion years ago. Their findings ...

Some of the most violently destructive forces of nature may have helped assemble the building blocks of life. To build a living cell, you need some pretty complex molecules: things like carbohydrates, ...

The first life-forms on Earth drew energy from sunlight filtering down into the ocean depths. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.