Carbon is often referred to as "the bedrock of life" because the element appears in all known life forms. This is because the sixth entry on the periodic table has the unique ability to form the ...

Analysis of organic compounds -- called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) -- extracted from the Ryugu asteroid and Murchison meteorite has found that certain PAHs likely formed in the cold areas ...

Chemists studying how life started often focus on how modern biopolymers like peptides and nucleic acids contributed, but modern biopolymers don't form easily without help from living organisms. A ...

Researchers may have figured out how a crucial ingredient that cells need to produce energy could form in deep space. Calculations and lab experiments suggest that glyceric acid can arise from ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Since their discovery in 1982, exotic materials known as quasicrystals have bedeviled physicists and chemists. Their atoms arrange ...