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

This meant subjecting microbes to minimum pressures equivalent to ten times those of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of ...

Hardy bacteria in a lab survived pressures comparable to an asteroid strike on the red planet, suggesting a hypothetical scenario in which our planet was seeded with life.

Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets—including Earth—and survive, a new ...

Out of all the planets in the Universe, Earth is clearly the best for life, right? Wrong. Earth may be great, but scientists have discovered a few worlds that could be even better for life. Behold, ...

Much depends upon the variables. What kind of explosion? What is meant by “evidence of life”? What or who is attempting to interpret any surviving evidence? Life has colonised all the niches on the ...

Life on Earth may exist thanks to an incredible stroke of luck — a chemical sweet spot that most planets miss during their formation but ours managed to hit. A new study shows that Earth formed under ...

(CNN) — Picture all of Earth’s oceans, which cover about 70% of the planet and are mostly made of hydrogen. Now multiply that by nine. That may be the amount of hydrogen in Earth’s core, possibly ...

Without the right oxygen balance, phosphorus and nitrogen vanish — and life can't take hold. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

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io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Death Echoes Overlapping” by Megan Chee. Enjoy!