Earth has not always been so hospitable to live. During several ice ages, the planet's surface was almost completely frozen over, creating what has been dubbed "Snowball Earth". Liquid water appears ...

Don Juan Pond isn’t just an awesomely assonant name for a little pool of water; it’s also the name of one of the most interesting ponds out there for astrobiologists. At 40 percent salinity, the pond ...

One of the saltiest bodies on Earth, an analog for what water might look like on Mars, is just one piece of a larger aquifer. At the base of the Transantarctic Mountains lies a geological oddity. Don ...

The world's saltiest body of water is tucked away in a valley in one of the most extreme environments on Earth. It rarely snows and never rains in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Winter temperatures can drop ...

Life on Earth began not with humans, but with meteorites and warm little ponds, according to recent research. That life began somewhere between 3.7 and 4.5 billion years ago as meteorites splashed ...

A 2014 photo shows a massive, iceberg-littered pool of vibrant blue meltwater sitting alone on top of a glacier in Alaska. Similar "melt ponds" are becoming increasingly common in the Arctic due to ...

Work is underway at NAS Patuxent River’s Holton Pond, near the Gate 3 roundabout, to rebuild the aging earthen dam originally constructed about 50 years ago to purposefully create the pond for ...