Finding extraterrestrial life in any form would be truly one of the largest discoveries in humankind’s history, yet after decades of scouring the surface of Mars and investigating other bodies like ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Ten years ago, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe pulled up alongside a dusty, icy lump the size of a mountain. The probe would ...

Far from Earth's hustle and bustle, in a hostile environment dominated by cold and a barely perceptible atmosphere, remnants of a distant past have been unearthed. These carbon chains rekindle hopes ...

For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, suggesting once again that the ...

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered a trove of complex organic molecules frozen in ice around a young star in a neighboring galaxy — including the first-ever detection of ...

Lab-based studies reveal how carbon atoms diffuse on the surface of interstellar ice grains to form complex organic compounds, crucial to reveal the chemical complexity in the universe. Lab-based ...

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and the Centro de Astrobiología, part of Spain’s CSIC-INTA, have identified the largest sulfur-bearing molecule ever ...

Ten years ago, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe pulled up alongside a dusty, icy lump the size of a mountain. The probe would follow its quarry, a comet called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, for ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University chemist Ei-ichi Negishi, whose work in creating a method to build complex organic molecules necessary for numerous purposes — from pharmaceutical manufacturing ...

This image of Enceladus shows half of the moon alight, its surface bright white with deep cracks colored light blue and some pitted areas. A mosaic of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, captured by Cassini on ...