I asked my friend Julie Ménard how Earth formed. She’s a planetary scientist at Washington State University. She told me it started with the Big Bang. That was nearly 14 billion years ago. “The Big ...

Astronomers are uncovering the earliest stages of planet formation with the help of technologies like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Recent findings from the Butterfly Nebula, 3,400 ...

Tiny zircon crystals are revealing that Earth’s earliest history may have included surprisingly complex tectonic activity.

Long before oceans stabilized and continents formed, Hadean Earth was a world of molten rock, relentless asteroid impacts, and toxic atmospheres. Surface temperatures were extreme, and the young ...

Even when Earth was locked in its most extreme deep freeze, the planet’s climate may not have been as silent and still as ...

Some 4.6 billion years ago, Earth was nothing like the gentle blue planet we know today. Frequent and violent celestial impacts churned its surface and interior into a seething ocean of magma—an ...

Earth has a long and dramatic history, and one recurring theme is extinction. Did you know that over the last 500 million years, our planet experienced five major mass extinction events? These events ...

Around 20,000 years ago, Earth was very, very cold. Global temperatures were 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than they are today and most of North America was covered in ice. That ice was almost half a ...

Ryugu’s samples reveal that water activity on asteroids lasted far longer than scientists thought, possibly reshaping theories of how Earth gained its oceans. A billion-year-old impact may have melted ...