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 ...

The chemical evolution of cellular life on early Earth from a mixture of water, carbon and nitrogen is shrouded in mystery. In the 1950s, formation in the atmosphere of molecules that can serve as ...

IT is now well established that most of the simple, biologically-important ‘monomers’ (such as amino-acids, pentoses, purines and fatty acids) are formed when various high-energy sources are applied ...