Like a pair of human hands, certain organic molecules have mirror-image versions of themselves, a chemical property known as chirality. These so-called "handed" molecules are essential for biology and have intriguingly been ...
Astronomy
Jun 14, 2016
23
3975
Four billion years ago, the Earth looked very different than it does today, devoid of life and covered by a vast ocean. Over the course of millions of years, in that primordial soup, life emerged. Researchers have long theorized ...
Biochemistry
Jul 28, 2022
8
2232
(PhysOrg.com) -- Nobody knows quite how life originated on Earth, but most scientists agree that living cells did not abruptly appear from nonliving cells in a single step. Instead, there were probably a series of pre-cellular ...
Cryptocurrency is usually "mined" through the blockchain by asking a computer to perform a complicated mathematical problem in exchange for tokens of cryptocurrency. But in research appearing in the journal Chem a team of ...
Biochemistry
Jan 24, 2024
0
159
(Phys.org)—Using the Shanghai Tianma 65m Radio Telescope (TMRT) a team of Chinese astronomers has detected a widespread presence of glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol around the giant molecular cloud Sagittarius B2. The ...
Ice analogs mimicking interstellar ice behave like liquids at temperatures between -210°C and -120°C according to Hokkaido University researchers. This liquid-like ice may enhance the formation of organic compounds including ...
Condensed Matter
Sep 29, 2017
4
265
A team of physicists have discovered that the environment of a molecular cloud in interstellar space can support the existence of fatty acids, a key component of life on Earth.
Astronomy
May 19, 2023
0
78
Just like the mythical creation stories that depict the formation of the world as the story of order from chaos, the early Earth was home to a chaotic clutter of organic molecules from which, somehow, more complex biological ...
Astrobiology
Feb 6, 2019
2
299
The universe is more than 13 billion years old and space is often depicted as a vast, empty vacuum. Other than planets and stars, there's nothing there, right? Actually, space is littered with complex, carbon-based molecules. ...
Astrobiology
Oct 24, 2023
0
18
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 lightning could have led to prebiotic ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 11, 2022
2
106
