Unexpected discovery of what makes life on Earth

Nestled in the deep sea, the witch of nature - the element that turns chaotic precursor molecules into the building blocks of life - still exists today.

Biophysicist Dieter Braun from Ludwig-Maximilians University (Germany) and his colleagues have identified what is the key to the organic materials on earth that do not exist in the form of pristine discrete forms like other planets. , which can combine to create life: bubbles in the deep sea.

In the lab, they created models called "thermal gradients", which contained a solution that was heated to one end and cooled to the other end, helping the precursor molecules to undergo temperature changes. severe when moving between hot and cold 2 heads. " It's like a micro ocean," Mr. Braun said.

Hot bubbles from the ground entering the cold water in the depths of the ocean may be what helps the "rotten" precursor molecules to become life building blocks - (photo: LIVE SCIENCE).

Under the ocean, hot volcanoes have pushed smoke up, freeing hot air bubbles , which are opposite to the environment near the sea floor - extremely cold deep water.

Extremely fast and extremely uncomfortable temperature changes when exposed almost simultaneously to extremely cold things and extremely hot things have stimulated the precursor molecules of life to change. For example, hydrolysed sugar molecules, a "skeleton" for nucleotides of RNA and DNA form. The acids form longer chains, the initial step of RNA. Finally, the molecules align themselves into simple cell structures.

According to Braun, without these bubbles, life-precursor molecules will be diffused in the environment. Heat bubbles as a catalyst, a key to activating the chain of reactions that create life.

This may further prove the hypothesis that in hydrothermal planets, such as Saturn's Earth or moon Enceladus, life could be born where hydrothermal vents erupted in mass. air balloon.

A total of 6 models representing 6 different stages of primitive life were created to prove this theory.

"Braun's model is an accurate representation of the primitive environment. Braun and colleagues have sprouted their experiments with many complex molecules necessary for life" - chemist Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy from the Institute. Scripps Oceanography (USA), who did not participate in the study, commented on Live Science. However, he did not rule out the possibility that ancient oceans had no conditions suitable for the preceding molecular forms mentioned above, and life was born in a different way.

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2. The process of formation and evolution of life on Earth