(Phys.org) —A small team of researchers with the University of California has found a way break apart carbon dioxide molecules and get carbon atoms and oxygen molecules instead of carbon monoxide and ...

The carbon dioxide in Earth's early atmosphere could have been turned into oxygen by intense UV light as well as by photosynthesis. Earth's atmosphere wasn't always full of life-giving oxygen — it was ...

Scientists have discovered a new way oxygen can form in carbon-dioxide-rich atmospheres of worlds beyond our own —- challenging assumptions about how we should search for life on other planets, and ...

Earth’s oxygen reservoir. The biological mechanism that produces oxygen-splitting water molecules during the light-dependent stage of photosynthesis.

Were humans to one day make it to Mars, one of the problems we’d need to have solved long in advance is how to produce necessities like fuel and drugs without having to take them there ourselves. One ...

A startling discovery puts a new twist on photosynthesis, arguably the most important biological process on Earth. Two studies suggest that certain widespread marine microorganisms have evolved a way ...

With a zap, a beam of ultraviolet light can blast carbon dioxide into oxygen gas, O 2. Because the sun hurls the same radiation, the reaction hints that breathable air could have formed on Earth ...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected a very tenuous atmosphere known as an exosphere, infused with oxygen and carbon dioxide around Saturn's icy moon Rhea. This is the first time a spacecraft has ...

Earth's atmosphere wasn't always full of life-giving oxygen — it was once a choking mixture of carbon dioxide and other gases, more like the atmosphere of Mars or Venus. It's widely believed that the ...