New organic compounds found in Enceladus ice grains

New kinds of organic compounds, the ingredients of amino acids, have been detected in the plumes bursting from Saturn's moon Enceladus. The findings are the result of the ongoing deep dive into data from NASA's Cassini mission.

New, highly stable catalyst may help turn water into fuel

Breaking the bonds between oxygen and hydrogen in water could be a key to the creation of hydrogen in a sustainable manner, but finding an economically viable technique for this has proved difficult. Researchers report a ...

Putting an end to plastic separation anxiety

Bio-based plastics such as polylactic acid (PLA) were invented to help solve the plastic waste crisis, but they often end up making waste management more challenging.

New insights into the origin of life

A famous experiment in 1953 showed that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could have formed spontaneously under the atmospheric conditions of early Earth. However, just because molecules could form doesn't mean ...

Did water-based life originate without water?

When trying to understand the origins of life on Earth, researchers run into a paradox: while water is an indispensable solvent for all known life forms that exist today, water also inhibits the formation of string-like chains ...

Search for life on Mars could get water-enhanced boost

A new experiment designed to detect amino acids on Mars, in spite of the reactive perchlorate in the Martian soil that typically breaks organic compounds down, could fly on a future mission to Mars to help in the search for ...

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