A team of Harvard chemists has found evidence suggesting that cloud-to-ground lightning strikes may have played a crucial role in generating the building blocks necessary for life to arise on our planet.
Life’s Blueprint, Decoded from Surprising Source
Over the years, different ideas about how life began on Earth have been put forward by scientists, including materials from comets and asteroids or even cloud-to-cloud lightning. However, with ongoing research has spewed these old ideas further from possibility.
A more plausible explanation has since been suggested by astronomers at Harvard: cloud-to-ground lightning. Simulating a biosphere that appeared in the early Earth, they observed chemical reaction when lightening struck air, water and land. The results were fascinating.
The researchers discovered the lightning strikes were able to transform carbon and nitrogen into molecules that may have been used to form life’s foundation, such as carbon monoxide, formic acid, nitrite, nitrate, and ammonium. The strikes also created other types of sulfide minerals and ammonia, which combined would have been necessary for life to start.
Recreating the Spark of Life
The Harvard researchers went on to add minerals reflective of the composition of Earths early rocks in their simulated environment, and repeated their experiments to probe even deeper into the possible chemical pathways involving lightning strikes. Results were even stronger.
The researchers found more ammonia being made, an essential life building block. They also pointed out the production of sulfide minerals — materials that typically show up during volcanic eruptions, which is yet another hallmark of primordial Earth.
Apparently cloud-to-ground lightning strikes were a better source than some other suggested candidates — comets, asteroids, or even cloud-to-cloud lightning. Their findings may offer a key glimpse into the labyrinthine world of how life could have originally sprung on Earth.
Conclusion
In other words, there is no way for the study from Harvard to give us any other insights on how life may have begun in Earth. The research shows that cloud-to-ground lightning strikes may be capable of producing the ingredients for life itself which in turn has provided a new entry point for researchers attempting to unravel how our planet evolved during its early stages. In our journey to uncover the origins of life, this work might be an important part of the puzzle.
