We need two ingredients for life to start on a planet: dry land and (fresh) water. Strictly, the water doesn't have to be fresh, but fresh water can only occur on dry land. Only with those two ...

Here is a problem that has been quietly gnawing at astronomers for decades. The standard approach to detecting life on other worlds involves scanning exoplanet atmospheres for oxygen, methane, and ...

In a new book, physicist Sara Walker argues that assembly theory can explain what life is, and even help scientists create new forms of it. Sara Walker, a physicist at Arizona State University, says ...

What is life? Like most great questions, this one is easy to ask but difficult to answer. Scientists have been trying for centuries, and philosophers have done so for millennia. Today our knowledge is ...

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