UCLA scientists strengthen case for life more than 3.8 billion years ago
"This paper shows, with far greater confidence than we ever had before, that these rocks are older than 3.8 billion years,"

Prebiotic synthesis from CO atmospheres: Implications for the origins of life
Study showing that a CO-CO2-N2-H2O atmosphere can give a variety of bioorganic compounds with yields comparable to those obtained from a strongly reducing atmosphere. Atmospheres containing carbon monoxide might therefore have been conducive to prebiotic

Expanding protein universe and its origin from the biological Big Bang
The authors attempted to glance at the origin of life by understanding the cause of peculiar patterns that nature imprints on protein structural space in the course of evolution...

Self-organizing biochemical cycles
The plausibility of theories postulating the development of complex chemical organization without requiring the replication of genetic polymers such as RNA was examined.

Prebiotic cytosine synthesis: A critical analysis and implications for the origin of life
The article presents series of reviews in which the chemical evidence for the availability of the Watson-Crick bases at the start of life is considered in detail.

The stability of the RNA bases: Implications for the origin of life
Results indicate that a high-temperature origin of life may be possible, but it cannot involve adenine, uracil, guanine, or cytosine.

Small Molecule Interactions Were Central To The Origin Of Life
In a discovery that has scientists rethinking where they came from, a groundbreaking study has revealed that living organisms could emigrate through the solar system in the relatively cool womb of a space rock, spreading life with little more fanfare than

Where There's Soup, There's Life
Gourmet geochemical "primordial soups" in hot springs and hydrothermal springs in the oceans that support novel chemolithotrophic thermophiles.

Scientists Crack 40-year-old DNA Puzzle And Point To 'Hot Soup' At The Origin Of Life
A new theory that explains why the language of our genes is more complex than it needs to be also suggests that the primordial soup where life began on earth was hot and not cold...

Experiment Shows Mars Needs To Take Antioxidants For Life
Intense ultraviolet radiation that pierces Mars' thin atmosphere produces an abundance of oxygen ions, a common free radical, at the Martian surface that destroys organic molecules - - the building blocks of life...

Are We All Aliens? The New Case for Panspermia
Nestled safely inside the belly of a comet orbiting some unknown star, a microscopic alien sits dormant.

The Volcanic Origin of Life
Recent experiments have demonstrated how a volcanic gas, carbonyl sulfide (COS), may have been instrumental in the "prebiotic" build-up of peptides.

Clay Material May Have Acted As 'Primordial Womb' For First Organic Molecules
A geochemist and her colleagues have discovered that certain clay minerals under conditions at the bottom of the ocean may have acted as incubators for the first organic molecules on Earth.

How Life Began: New Research Suggests Simple Approach
Somewhere on Earth, close to 4 billion years ago, a set of molecular reactions flipped a switch and became life.

Life, Life Everywhere
Different views on the origin of life on earth...

Scientists Find Clues That Life Began in Deep Space
Duplicating the harsh conditions of space in their laboratory, NASA scientists have created primitive cells with membrane-like structures. These chemical compounds may have played a part in the origin of life.

How did life begin? Biochemical evolution on mineral surfaces
A geophysicist theorized how small organic molecules may have been able to assemble on the surfaces of minerals into self-replicating biomolecules--the essential building blocks of life.

The Molecules that Fell to Earth
Stardust's seven year mission is to collect samples of the interstellar dust that fills the cosmos... Supporters of the mission hope that this could help to shed light on the secret of the origins of life.

It's alive – isn't it?
Speculations on the origin of life have, until recently, been purely theoretical. The latest experimental findings, however, are raising more questions than they're answering...