Long before oceans teemed with life, Earth endured relentless violence. Asteroids slammed into its surface again and again, reshaping the young planet.

Life made the modern Earth as much as the Earth made life, a new book by a philosopher of consciousness argues. That dynamic leaves humans with a unique set of moral questions, Peter Godfrey-Smith of ...

At first, scientists thought Earth’s water came from comets. Then, asteroids. Now, they wonder if Earth’s water is homegrown.

A new take on the origins of Earth’s water claims to reveal the composition of the Earth in the first few million years after it formed. This theory proposes the planet was dry before the collision ...

Caltech researchers have identified a novel chemical reaction that could explain the formation of the building blocks of DNA and RNA, the molecules that encode all of life's functions. The work is an ...

Geophysicists have modeled how Earth’s magnetic field could form even when its core was fully liquid. By removing the effects of viscosity in their simulation, they revealed a self-sustaining dynamo ...

According to the Gaia hypothesis, life created Earth—or at least the Earth we know today. This theory, first formulated by chemist James Lovelock in the 1970s, was a hit with the media and the public ...

The formation of the Earth’s continents occurred during a fiery afterbirth known as the Archean Eon, which stretched from 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago. It was in this bubbling cauldron of ...

Today, more than 70% of Earth is covered in liquid water. But long before the sea became a familiar feature of our planet’s surface, the water that now fills our oceans, lakes, and streams was ...