Space sciences Astrobiology
News
29 Jan 2026
Sticky life beginnings. Precarious pitcher plant, Breaking the cobalt "cage", Toxic algae killer & “Pure-bred” stem cell medium. Read all in the latest Editor's Choice. Plus Asia Research News 2026 is out now and SciCom Coffee talk by Rachael Smith at Wellcome Sanger Institute.
01 Dec 2025
Surface-bound gels may have provided the structure and chemistry for life to take root on Earth, and perhaps beyond
20 Feb 2025
Asteroid contains life’s building blocks, How fish detect color, Eco-friendly artificial muscles, Cell imaging gets a glow-up, Quantum gem, Healing skin with milkfish. Plus the 2025 Magazine is here, Read all in the latest Editor's Choice.
29 Jan 2025
Japanese collaborators detected all five nucleobases — building blocks of DNA and RNA — in samples returned from asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission.
31 Oct 2024
This model reveals how vastly different the atmosphere was on ancient Earth, and how life may have first emerged.
21 Mar 2023
Samples from the asteroid Ryugu collected by the Hayabusa2 mission contain nitrogenous organic compounds, including the nucleobase uracil, which is a part of RNA.
10 Mar 2023
Finding extra-terrestrial life would transform how we view our place in the Universe, but reporting on the search for it poses challenges for scientists and the media.
10 Mar 2023
地球外生命が発見されれば、宇宙における私たちの存在意義に変化をもたらすだろう。しかしその探索に関する報道の在り方は、科学者やメディアにとって未だに大きな課題である。
27 Sep 2021
The missing link isn’t a not-yet-discovered fossil, after all. It’s a tiny, self-replicating globule called a coacervate droplet, developed by two researchers in Japan to represent the evolution of chemistry into biology.
11 May 2021
Tony Z. Jia is a specially-appointed assistant professor and lab manager at Japan’s Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), based at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is an astrobiologist and shared highlights from his dual research/management role.
27 Sep 2019
An experiment shows that one of the basic units of life — nucleobases — could have originated within giant gas clouds interspersed between the stars.
Events
09 Sep 2021 to 10 Sep 2021
Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) will launch a new Master-PhD course on origin-of-life science and astrobiology at Tokyo Institute of Technology. The five-year ELSI course is open for domestic and international students who wish to tackle fundamental questions in natural science such as the origin and evolution of living planets. ELSI will provide financial support (as salary of a research assistant) for all the students, except for ones who are going to be supported by JSPS DC fellowships (Japan) or equivalent fellowships.
Researchers
Tony Z. Jia is a researcher at Japan’s Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), based at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. His research focuses on astrobiology, prebiotic chemistry, and origins of life.
Giants in history
Cyril Andrew Ponnamperuma (16 October 1923 – 20 December 1994) was a Sri Lankan chemist who was interested in the origins of life on Earth. His research in chemical evolution showed how inanimate molecules may have given rise to the building blocks of life – a process known as abiogenesis.