ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM,
JANIECBROS
Primordial electrical storms might have helped provide a key building block to initiate life on Earth, according to a study published March 16 in Nature Communications.
Phosphorus is an essential element for all known life, forming the backbone of DNA and RNA molecules. Although the element was abundant on ancient Earth, most of it was locked inside nonreactive minerals. This had led researchers to hypothesize, in a 2005 study, that meteorites were responsible for the delivery of reactive phosphorus in the form of the mineral schreibersite, according to NPR.
But the origins of life on Earth might have been home grown. A team of geologists discovered that lightning strikes here on our planet can form schreibersite.
That means the “emergence of life is not necessarily connected to meteorite impacts,” Sandra Piazolo, a geologist at the University of Leeds in England and a coauthor of the study, ...
