Agence France-PresseMar 19, 2021 10:07:36 IST
Lightning strikes may have given the primordial Earth enough phosphorus to support the emergence of life, according to a new study Tuesday that provided another explanation for the birth of living organisms. Phosphorus is a vital life-building block as we know it, forming basic cell structures and helix double formation of DNA and RNA. Billions of years ago on early Earth, most of the available phosphorus was locked away in insoluble minerals. But one mineral, schreibersite, is highly reactive and produces phosphorus capable of forming organic molecules.
Lightning strikes may have given the primordial Earth enough ground to support the emergence of life.
Since most schreibersite on Earth comes from meteorites, it has long been thought that the appearance of life here is linked to the reach of rocks outside the country. But schreibersite also has a glass-like interior within the rock formed by lightning strikes in some types of clay-rich soils.
Researchers in the US and Britain used state-of-the-art imaging techniques to study the amount of phosphorus-producing ore formed in each lightning strike.
They then estimated the amount of schreibersite that could have been extracted over the birds before and around the time life appeared on Earth, about 3.5 billion years ago.
“Early lightning strikes on Earth may have provided a lot of reduced phosphorus,” said Benjamin Hess, lead study author from Yale’s Department of Earth Sciences and Planning, AFP. “And by combining our best knowledge of the Earth’s early state, I think our results bring out this idea.”
Writing in the magazine Nature Communication, Hess and his colleagues estimated that lightning strikes could have emitted between 110 and 11,000 kilograms of phosphorus each year.
Using symbols of the climate on Earth early, they said that while meteor strikes began to decline after the Moon was formed 4.5 billion years ago, lightning strikes crossed space rocks for production phosphorus about 3.5 billion years ago.
That time corresponds to the origin of life.
Hess said the research did not completely reduce meteorites as another source of life-giving phosphorus.
“The effects of a meteor around the time of life appeared far less than expected ten years ago,” he said. “But I don’t see our work as a competition against meteorites as a source of phosphorus. The more sources, the better. “
He said he wanted to know if lightning strikes emit phosphorus levels on other planets where meteor strikes are rare.
“Meteor impacts diminish over time but lightning, at least on Earth, is relatively stable over time,” Hess said.