The Great Oxidation Event, one of the most significant turning points in Earth's history, marks the time when oxygen levels in the atmosphere dramatically increased, transforming the planet and its ...

Collisions among molecules in early Earth’s atmosphere may have prevented our planet from freezing over eons ago, when the sun was much dimmer than it is today, keeping the world warm enough for ...

Step back two billion years to a time when Earth looked nothing like the world we know today. This fascinating journey into ...

A previously unexploited source of information is now throwing new light on Earth's climate during the age of dinosaurs.

An illustration of early Earth, which may have had a toxic atmosphere like Venus's today When Earth was young, its surface was probably covered in a magma ocean, and the gases rising from that ...

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute More than 2.4 billion years ago, Earth's atmosphere was inhospitable, filled with toxic gases that drove wildly fluctuating surface temperatures.

More information: Hongping He et al, A mineral-based origin of Earth's initial hydrogen peroxide and molecular oxygen, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023).

See how Earth transformed from a barren hellscape to a planet capable of sustaining life. Early Earth was a hellscape of molten lava and barren rock, bombarded by meteors, with no atmosphere at all.

A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates Earth in its infancy probably had substantial quantities of hydrogen in its atmosphere, a surprising finding that may alter the way many ...

Prior to the new study, the prevailing scientific view was that the atmosphere of Earth some 3 billion years ago was primarily made up of nitrogen gas with lesser amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, ...

During long portions of the past 2.4 billion years, the Earth may have been more inhospitable to life than scientists previously thought, according to new computer simulations.