Joelle Renstrom

The building blocks of life might have had a cosmic origin before hitching a ride to the early Earth on meteorites.

New research by a trans-Atlantic team of scientists suggests that bacteria could survive in briny chemicals that exist on Mars, Enceladus, Europa, Pluto and possibly elsewhere.

The early Earth may have been more temperate than previously thought, suggesting that the window for life to get a foothold on rocky planets around the galaxy could be quite large.

Mars may have formed in what today is the Asteroid Belt, roughly one and a half times as far from the sun as its current position, before migrating to its present location.