So do you want to create life? You will need some ingredients first. On Earth four billion years ago, you may find some of these ingredients in the impact craters of asteroid attacks (as long as you don’t get blown up yourself). A new place to look for new research from the University of Leeds could be the location of lightning strikes. The lighting is less destructive, more abundant, and also creates useful minerals from which to build your early, unicellular life forms.
The study, published this week in Nature Communications, focuses on the element phosphorus, which is one of the six most important building blocks of life alongside carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. On earth, phosphorus is difficult to find in a usable form because “it is bound in minerals like apatite, which are effectively insoluble in water”. But usable phosphorus can be produced by meteorite impacts “in the form of the mineral writerite, [which] has proven to be highly reactive, ”suggests the paper. Writer’s unique ability to dissolve in water makes it very useful for the formation of organic molecules and likely played a key role in the creation of early life forms.
Meteorites aren’t the only way to get clerk site. It can also be made by lightning strike, as lead author Benjamin Hess found out. Hess made the discovery while examining a fulgurite (a stone formed by a flash of light) found in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in 2016. Upon careful examination of the fulgurite, he found that it contained an unexpectedly large amount of scribe’site.
The Glen Ellyn Fulgurite during excavation. The ruler is 15cm long. Photo credit: Benjamin Hess.
The implications of this discovery are important not only in understanding the origins of life on earth, but also in calculating the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. As I wrote earlier this week, most asteroid attacks in Earth’s history occurred at once during a catastrophic event known as the late heavy bombardment 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago. After that, asteroid attacks in the inner solar system rarely became an event. If this is the case in other solar systems as well, phosphorus can only be extracted from asteroids early during a planet’s formative bombardment period. Life would have to form early or miss its chance to flourish.
“The lightning bolt, on the other hand, is not a one-off event,” explains Hess’ mentor Jason Harvey. “When the atmospheric conditions are favorable for the generation of lightning, elements essential for the formation of life can be delivered to the surface of a planet. This could mean that life could arise on Earth-like planets at any point in time. “
Lightning’s ability to produce scribbler site greatly expands the chances life must develop over the course of a planet’s history, and it could mean that life in the universe is more common than expected. Lightning also has the added benefit of being less destructive than a meteor and less likely to disrupt early microbial development.
The Glen Ellyn Fulgurite after the excavation. Photo credit: Benjamin Hess.
Scientists still don’t know exactly how abiogenesis – the process of making life out of non-living matter – happened. However, this new research makes it clear that phosphorus, one of the rarer ingredients required for this, has been available on earth in a usable form for much longer than we thought. The next time you run into a thunderstorm, remember that you are watching the planet seed itself with usable phosphorus that organisms like us and our microbial ancestors can enjoy.
Hess is now a PhD student at Yale University. Sandra Piazolo from the University of Leeds was involved in the work as a mentor in addition to Harvey.
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Selected image source: Lucy Entwisle
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