A team of researchers has discovered a clever way to turn falling water droplets – like those from rain – into usable ...

Now, new research published March 14 in the journal Science Advances suggests that fizzes of barely visible “microlightning,” generated between charged droplets of water mist, could have been potent ...

By isolating solvent background and solute ... More information: Lixue Shi et al, Water structure and electric fields at the interface of oil droplets, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08702 ...

The building blocks of life on Earth may have been fueled by tiny sparks hopping between water droplets. Four billion years ago, Earth was a lifeless world, but a dynamic one. Crashing waves ...

How life began on Earth has been a long-standing mystery, but according to a study the process could have been kicked off simply with crashing waterfalls and breaking waves that would have thrown up ...

A new study from Stanford suggests that life might have been kickstarted by constant zaps from “microlightning” between water droplets. The most profound missing link in the evolutionary tree ...

New research from Stanford University suggests that water droplets, when sprayed into a mix of gases found in early Earth’s atmosphere, can create organic molecules. Among them is uracil, a key ...

Water droplets create “microlightning” when they split, producing electrical discharges without any external power source These tiny electrical sparks can transform simple gases into complex organic ...

Life may have first emerged on Earth after crashing waterfalls or breaking waves sparked tiny “microlightning” discharges in water droplets, according to a new study. The research, published ...

Tiny sparks from crashing water droplets may have sparked life’s origins, not lightning bolts. Researchers discovered that microlightning can form crucial organic molecules, redefining how we think ...