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"Microlightning" between water droplets could have sparked life on Earth
Dr. Frankenstein might not have needed a lightning bolt to bring his monster to life after all. A new study from Stanford suggests that life might have been kickstarted by constant zaps from “microlightning” between water droplets.
It’s thought that early Earth contained a primordial soup of ingredients essential for biology as we know it – all it needed was a specific catalyst to kick off the chemical reactions to turn inorganic compounds organic. The seminal 1952 Miller-Urey experiment sent jolts of electricity through a flask of water and gases intended to represent early Earth’s atmosphere, and found that certain amino acids and other important biological molecules were produced. “Given that lightning is an intermittent and unpredictable phenomenon, whereas water sprays are so common on Earth, we suggest that our results provide another possible pathway for the abiotic formation of carbon-nitrogen bonds,” the researchers write.
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