Asteroids and comets that repeatedly smashed into the early Earth covered the planet's surface with molten rock during its earliest days, but still may have left oases of water that could have ...

Life originated as a result of natural processes that exploited early Earth's raw materials. Scientific models of life's origins almost always look to minerals for such essential tasks as the ...

Hydrosphere interactions and alteration of the terrestrial crust likely played a critical role in shaping Earth’s surface, and in promoting prebiotic reactions leading to life, before 4.03 Ga (the ...

Before so much as the first microbe existed, there had to be amino acids thought to have formed in one of the primordial oozes of early Earth. It was previously thought that lightning might have ...

Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago, during the geological eon known as the Hadean. The name “Hadean” comes from the Greek god of the underworld, reflecting the extreme heat that likely ...