The creation of the Universe was a messy business, and billions of years after the Big Bang, material still litters the dark space between stars. In these cold interstellar regions, gas and dust ...

For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, indicating that the conditions ...

Finding extraterrestrial life in any form would be truly one of the largest discoveries in humankind’s history, yet after decades of scouring the surface of Mars and investigating other bodies like ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Ten years ago, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe pulled up alongside a dusty, icy lump the size of a mountain. The probe would ...

Ten years ago, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe pulled up alongside a dusty, icy lump the size of a mountain. The probe would follow its quarry, a comet called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, for ...

Enceladus, a 500-kilometer-wide moon of Saturn, has been a top target in the hunt for extraterrestrial life for nearly two decades. In 2005, shortly after arriving in orbit around the ringed planet, ...

Researchers devised a method to extract macrocycles by precisely cleaving crystals, bypassing stepwise synthesis and enabling direct access to complex molecules. (Nanowerk News) A team of ICN2 ...

A detailed understanding of the sources, transformations and fates of organic species in the environment is crucial because of the central roles that they play in human health, biogeochemical cycles ...

Symposium organizers drew attention to a session earlier this month at the ACS national meeting in San Diego with a provocative title: “Is There a Crisis in Organic Chemistry Education?” But many of ...