Researchers at MSU found that H₃⁺ can form in unexpected ways. They studied molecules hit by high-energy light.

When asteroids like Bennu hit the young Earth, they could have provided a complete package of complex molecules and the ingredients essential to life, such as water, phosphate, and ammonia. Together, ...

New findings reveal that a NASA mission traveled to an asteroid that may have once been covered in salty lakes containing ...

In a small manganese oxide cluster, teams from HZB and HU Berlin have discovered a particularly exciting compound: two high-spin manganese centers in two very different oxidation states. This complex ...

Space is home to a great many oddities, and even chemistry gets strange out there. In fact, there are even some molecules that you'd never find here on Earth.

There are 20 amino acids that create the proteins required for life on our planet — and scientists have now found exactly 14 of them on an asteroid millions of miles away. The asteroid in question, ...

Beryllium-10, a rare radioactive isotope produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, provides valuable insights into the Earth ...

These molecules pair up to form the "rungs" of the DNA or RNA ladder, enabling gene replication and expression. Bennu's samples contain all five nucleic acid bases, confirming that these fundamental ...

Using basic molecules of elements like benzene and sulphur, the same scientists in 2010 figured out a way to make molecules that self-replicate, like DNA can. That inspired the researchers to ...

Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, according to research that provides some of the best evidence to date that such ...

Laboratory-measured compositions of CI chondrites are essentially identical, minus hydrogen and helium, to the composition of elements carried by convection ... They are also rich in prebiotic organic ...