Vestibulum fermentum augue non lectus sodales, non cursus massa aliquet. Curabitur ut dictum lacus. Aliquam at dapibus turpis, ut hendrerit ex. Maecenas ornare lorem sit amet leo porttitor, id laoreet nisi mollis. Pellentesque accumsan diam quam, vitae interdum justo pulvinar nec. Vivamus dapibus eu ligula sit amet ornare. Sed at odio sem. Aliquam in pharetra ex, non tincidunt dui. Donec suscipit sapien vel augue egestas, sit amet imperdiet metus tempor. Phasellus euismod tempus ligula, sit amet faucibus ex feugiat et. Suspendisse tincidunt enim sapien, eu pretium mauris pretium in.
Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Phasellus quis elit at velit luctus molestie at sed augue. Donec a imperdiet massa, ac tempor metus. Ut vel cursus tellus, ut molestie libero. Donec efficitur in leo id lobortis. Fusce id vehicula nibh, at placerat elit. Aliquam quis viverra nisi. In nisl nisi, mollis eu sem porta, tempor tincidunt lectus. Morbi vehicula leo magna, sit amet commodo purus tempus in. Nam id vestibulum nulla, vel viverra justo. Praesent pellentesque et tortor condimentum tincidunt. Praesent sodales lacus lacus, ut interdum augue ullamcorper ac. Nunc sit amet nisl justo.
Quisque lobortis lectus sed justo egestas tempor. In eros metus, aliquam sed ornare quis, iaculis eu justo. Sed auctor placerat dapibus. Etiam pulvinar viverra lorem, eu vulputate odio aliquam id. Praesent ullamcorper lorem vitae erat ultricies, a bibendum diam pellentesque. Fusce quis suscipit turpis, nec aliquam orci. Integer eleifend congue magna ac tristique. Pellentesque in orci aliquet, ullamcorper velit at, condimentum ex. Morbi ac vulputate odio. Quisque vitae dolor luctus, egestas mi ut, aliquet sem. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Morbi ut eleifend lectus.
Cras a diam sit amet justo congue lobortis. In enim felis, viverra quis malesuada a, malesuada a ligula. Ut in tincidunt felis, eget interdum turpis. Sed luctus vulputate est ut tincidunt. Sed eleifend risus nec blandit congue. Integer porta mauris eget odio laoreet, et ultrices lectus ullamcorper. Curabitur ullamcorper, turpis sed aliquam luctus, ipsum sem congue est, condimentum sodales nisl erat in sapien. Ut sit amet metus tortor.
Eth Mixer
Lightning is a dramatic display of electrical power, but it is also sporadic and unpredictable. Even on a volatile Earth billions of years ago, lightning may have been too infrequent to produce amino acids in quantities sufficient for life — a fact that has cast doubt on such theories in the past, Zare said.
Water spray, however, would have been more common than lightning. A more likely scenario is that mist-generated microlightning constantly zapped amino acids into existence from pools and puddles, where the molecules could accumulate and form more complex molecules, eventually leading to the evolution of life.
“Microdischarges between obviously charged water microdroplets make all the organic molecules observed previously in the Miller-Urey experiment,” Zare said. “We propose that this is a new mechanism for the prebiotic synthesis of molecules that constitute the building blocks of life.”
However, even with the new findings about microlightning, questions remain about life’s origins, he added. While some scientists support the notion of electrically charged beginnings for life’s earliest building blocks, an alternative abiogenesis hypothesis proposes that Earth’s first amino acids were cooked up around hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, produced by a combination of seawater, hydrogen-rich fluids and extreme pressure.
Yet another hypothesis suggests that organic molecules didn’t originate on Earth at all. Rather, they formed in space and were carried here by comets or fragments of asteroids, a process known as panspermia.
“We still don’t know the answer to this question,” Zare said. “But I think we’re closer to understanding something more about what could have happened.”
Though the details of life’s origins on Earth may never be fully explained, “this study provides another avenue for the formation of molecules crucial to the origin of life,” Williams said. “Water is a ubiquitous aspect of our world, giving rise to the moniker ‘Blue Marble’ to describe the Earth from space. Perhaps the falling of water, the most crucial element that sustains us, also played a greater role in the origin of life on Earth than we previously recognized.”