Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key
puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.
While it is generally accepted that some important
ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists
have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the
building blocks of life.
This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now
found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes
something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus
minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were
likely to have been common across the early Earth.