The chemical basis of the lichen’s resistance lies in its UV-opaque cortex, a structural layer enriched with phenolic lichen ...

In the vast and often unseen world of microscopic life, a recent discovery may force scientists to rethink what it means to ...

The collapse of tropical forests during Earth's most catastrophic extinction event was the primary cause of the prolonged ...

Thriving microbe communities living in the most-polluted spots in the US offer insight into how to clean up the mess of ...

We had a blast working on this project. To study the limits of life, we collected literature data on extreme organisms, from insects that live in the Himalayas at high altitudes and low ...

"The drop in oxygen is very, very extreme," Earth scientist Chris Reinhard, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, told New Scientist. "We're talking around a million times less oxygen than there ...

In most of the environments we currently study, we know too little about the conditions to meaningfully attempt such models – except for some solar system bodies, such as Saturn’s Enceladus.

Even on Earth, organisms require different conditions to survive—there are no camels in Antarctica. By talking about specific organisms, we made the question easier to answer.