In 1952, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey made sparks fly in a gas-filled flask meant to reflect the composition of Earth's atmosphere around 3.8 billion years ago. Their results suggested that ...

Scientists in the New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have used the oldest minerals on Earth to reconstruct the atmospheric conditions present on Earth very soon after ...

Using primitive meteorites called chondrites as their models, earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have performed outgassing calculations and shown that the early Earth ...

In 1929 British biochemist John Haldane (1892-1964) put forth the theory that the early atmosphere of Earth contained no free oxygen. Haldane and Soviet biochemist Aleksander Oparin (1894-1980) had ...

Researchers recreated conditions from billions of years ago and found that Earth’s young atmosphere could make key molecules linked to life. These sulfur-rich compounds, including certain amino acids, ...

A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates Earth in its infancy probably had substantial quantities of hydrogen in its atmosphere, a surprising finding that may alter the way many ...

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, possesses a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere that bears striking similarities to that of early Earth. Scientists are fascinated by Titan’s atmospheric composition and its ...