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 ...

Explore the history of life on Earth, from 3.5-billion-year-old fossils to the vast diversity of species on our planet today.

A popular model of evolution concludes that it was incredibly unlikely for humanity to evolve on Earth, and that extraterrestrial intelligence is vanishingly rare. But as experts on the entangled ...

While giving many benefits, aspects of modern society can also be harmful to our physical, mental, and cultural health. We can overcome many of these detriments if we better understand and express our ...

The story of Charles Darwin’s life. His theory of evolution changed the way we understood our place in the world.

The emergence of the first biopolymers and their building blocks on the early Earth is considered a key moment in the origin of life (OoL), but how life began on the prebiotic Earth from a pile of ...

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 ...

For decades, many scientists have relied on the "hard steps" model to suggest that intelligent life is rare — the improbable result of a series of unlikely evolutionary leaps. But new research by ...

"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 ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Andréa Morris reports on emergent intelligence in diverse systems. “Where are all the genetic cures?” asks Denis Noble, a ...