Colombian astrochemist Dr Heidy Mayerly Quitián-Lara is creating synthetic ices to study the formation of molecules that could lead to the origin of life in young planetary systems. "The goal of my ...

Scientists have been fascinated by the third interstellar object to ever known to visit our solar system that is revealing more and more surprising secrets. 3I/ATLAS was discovered this summer on 1 ...

The eternal chicken-or-egg Earth-Mars enigma --- did Mars seed life on Earth or did Earth seed putative life on the Red Planet? --- is utter astrobiological “nonsense.” Or so says Pascale Ehrenfreund, ...

New research suggests that the sugar ribose -- the “R” in RNA -- is probably found in comets and asteroids that zip through the solar system and may be more abundant throughout the universe than was ...

Researchers may have figured out how a crucial ingredient that cells need to produce energy could form in deep space. Calculations and lab experiments suggest that glyceric acid can arise from ...

The chemistry leading to life may start before stars are even born. In the planet-forming disk of gas and dust around a young star, astronomers have detected methanol. The disk is too warm for the ...

Frequent readers of Outside the Box may recall my predictions for 2013, particularly Prediction #5, “She blinded me with science”. I predicted the continual adoption of modular instruments by the ...

April 26 (UPI) --New evidence found in meteorites suggests the ingredients for life came from space. Scientists at NASA and in Japan confirmed Tuesday they found all five key building blocks of DNA ...

Today professor Ewine van Dishoeck (Leiden Observatory, Leiden University) was awarded the Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award 2014. The Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award is awarded annually to a scientist who ...

AN INTERNATIONAL research team has peered into a gaseous cloud at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy and detected ethyl formate and n-propyl cyanide, two of the most complex organic molecules ever ...