Feb 13, 2025 09:32 PM
https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/chemi...irst-life/
INTRO: A team of researchers say their latest attempts to understand how molecules chemically reacted to form the basic building blocks of life on Earth are promising.
There has long been debate about the origins of the basic building blocks of life on Earth. Did these first organic compounds form through processes on our planet, or were they brought to Earth on asteroids which battered the planet when it was still forming?
Now researchers have challenged the notion that early chemical evolution before the first life would have been too chaotic, showing that the chemical precursors to life were able to evolve in an ordered way on young Earth. Researchers simulated the wet-dry cycles of early Earth to see how they would have impacted on chemical mixtures to create the molecular foundations of the first life on our planet.
The research, published in Nature Chemistry, shows that organic molecules in these conditions underwent continuous transformation, selective organisation and synchronised population dynamics.
Instead of random chemical reactions, molecules would have organised and evolved following predictable patterns. They argue that is how the “primordial soup” where life is theorised to have begun, evolved more than 4 billion years ago... (MORE - details)
INTRO: A team of researchers say their latest attempts to understand how molecules chemically reacted to form the basic building blocks of life on Earth are promising.
There has long been debate about the origins of the basic building blocks of life on Earth. Did these first organic compounds form through processes on our planet, or were they brought to Earth on asteroids which battered the planet when it was still forming?
Now researchers have challenged the notion that early chemical evolution before the first life would have been too chaotic, showing that the chemical precursors to life were able to evolve in an ordered way on young Earth. Researchers simulated the wet-dry cycles of early Earth to see how they would have impacted on chemical mixtures to create the molecular foundations of the first life on our planet.
The research, published in Nature Chemistry, shows that organic molecules in these conditions underwent continuous transformation, selective organisation and synchronised population dynamics.
Instead of random chemical reactions, molecules would have organised and evolved following predictable patterns. They argue that is how the “primordial soup” where life is theorised to have begun, evolved more than 4 billion years ago... (MORE - details)