Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

"Consciousness," although challenging to define, can be thought of as a first-person awareness of one's surroundings and oneself. You sense the world through your eyes, nose, ears and hands, and track ...

Geerat Vermeij's latest book explores a new approach to thinking about the evolution of life through the accumulation of 'power,' defined as the ability of organisms to take up or expend energy. (UC ...

Paleontologists who study earth’s ancient fossil record might not seem to be the obvious choice when asking about the prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. But paleontology, the study of ...

Why do you have five fingers? Why not ten, or twenty, or one? Why do so many animals have five fingers? Five seems to be the perfect number for most hands. Oddly, the first vertebrates to come onto ...

Dive into the most dramatic events in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, from its birth to the emergence of humanity. How did a hellscape of molten lava transform into a lush, green, watery planet ...

"This is the story of Earth like you’ve never seen it before—from the first spark of life to prehistoric monsters to the rise of humans… and all the weird stuff in between." We live on a magnificently ...