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A new study by researchers at Stanford University suggests that the building blocks of life may have formed through tiny electrical discharges between water droplets instead of relying mainly on large lightning strikes.
The research, published in the journal Science Advances, found that spraying water into a mixture of gases believed to resemble Earth's early atmosphere produced organic molecules containing carbon-nitrogen (C–N) bonds. These bonds connect carbon and nitrogen atoms and are found in proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, chlorophyll and many other molecules that living organisms need. The molecules produced in the experiment included hydrogen cyanide, glycine, the simplest amino acid that helps build proteins, and uracil, one of the four chemical bases that make up RNA.
The findings offer another possible explanation for how the first organic molecules formed on Earth and add a new perspective to the long-debated Miller-Urey hypothesis.
The Miller-Urey hypothesis comes from a landmark 1952 experiment that recreated conditions thought to exist on the early Earth. In that experiment, electrical sparks were passed through a mixture of water and simple gases, producing amino acids and other organic molecules from non-living chemicals. The results suggested that lightning could have helped create some of the chemical building blocks needed for life. However, some scientists have argued that lightning strikes may not have happened often enough, or over enough of the early oceans, for this to fully explain how these molecules formed.
