When NASA scientists opened the sample return canister from the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample mission in late 2023, they found ...

Earth’s origin story has always had missing pages, from the chemistry of its first crust to the ingredients that seeded life.

Meteorites are like a time machine and spacecraft all in one. Discover how our scientists use rare specimens in the meteorite ...

Bennu samples reveal biological sugars, a strange, gum-like material, and ancient stardust that shed light on the early solar ...

The nitrogen in the gum was found to be in nitrogen heterocycles, which are the building blocks of nucleobases in DNA and RNA ...

A violent stellar explosion has just given astronomers their clearest look yet at how some of the raw ingredients for biology ...

It’s been hypothesized for decades that life on Earth may not have been as “homegrown” as one might think and now, we’re ...

In 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought materials from the surface of the asteroid Bennu (pictured) safely back to Earth. The returned samples were then curated carefully, to prevent the ...

Physics World is delighted to announce its Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year for 2025, which includes research in astronomy, antimatter, atomic and molecular physics and more. The Top Ten is the ...

P. Jenniskens, SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center; and M. Breukers and C. Johannink, Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS), BeNeLux, report that the chi Cygnids meteor shower (IAU ...

Its last close encounter was in mid-September, the closest one yet, passing just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface. It passed through the boundary between outer space and the region where the ...