Hydrothermal Vents Kick-Started Early Life, Study Argues
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - 12:07
in Physics & Chemistry
The 'primordial soup' theory--which posits that early life began in a soup of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later--is fatally flawed, according to researchers writing in BioEssays. In the new paper the authors claim it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life. In rejecting the soup theory the team turned to the Earth's chemistry to identify the energy source which could power the first primitive predecessors of living organisms: geochemical gradients across a honeycomb of microscopic natural caverns at hydrothermal vents. Thesecatalytic cells generated lipids, proteins and nucleotides giving rise to the first true cells. read more