Life on Earth may come from meteorites

How does life on Earth begin? A study published on October 2 in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences said that life on our planet originated from regular meteorites "visiting" Earth billions of years ago , some of It has "accidentally" fallen into warm lakes and helped to form the right conditions to produce nucleic acids - one of the four major macromolecules that play an essential role in all life forms.

The hypothesis of life on Earth comes from "small warm lakes" first laid out by biologist Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory.

In 1987, in a letter to a friend, Darwin hypothesized that life could have originated in small warm lakes, bringing together suitable chemical conditions for a protein compound to form and then develop into more complex form. Since then, researchers still debate the theory.

Life on our planet comes from the regular meteorite "visiting" Earth billions of years ago.(Artwork: Getty).

New McMaster University research supports Darwin's lake hypothesis , arguing that a cyclic transformation environment from wet to dry and vice versa is necessary to connect basic molecules in lake water environment into molecules of ribonucleic acid (RNA) capable of replicating itself.

These RNA molecules constitute the first genetic code to form life on Earth and appear before DNA. Ralph Pudritz, an expert at McMaster University's Department of Physics and Astrophysics and an author of the study, said that DNA "is too complicated" to be the first life platform on Earth and RNA is fake. theory more suitable.

Thomas Henning, an expert at the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy and co-author of the study, said that to find the answer to the origin of life, first of all need to understand the state of the Earth at the time of goods. billion years ago.

In the period of 3.7 to 4.5 billion years ago, Earth was frequently attacked by meteorites, at a rate of about 8-11% higher than today. The atmosphere was then "covered in volcanic gas" and the area of ​​solid land was very small because the continents were still in the process of rising from the ocean.

Under these conditions, it is easy for meteorites to fall into a water environment and thereby form an environment that gathers the necessary elements to generate RNA such as ammonia, phosphorus, light, temperature, and electricity, .

Gradually, these factors achieve proper concentration and proportion and stick together. Then, RNA gradually evolved and paved the way for the development of DNA, the foundation for all forms of high-level life.

1. Life on Earth can come from the universe
2. Life on Earth may have started over 4 billion years ago