Hydrothermal vents and the origins of life// Documentary #1.
In the 1970’s, geologists discovered hydrothermal vents, holes in the ocean floor that spew out scalding hot water. They subsequently learned that these seemingly inhospitable environments actually permitted the existence of primitive life forms. Some scientists believe that such conditions, and not the ‘warm little pond’ theorized by Darwin, might have been the setting for the formation of the first life on Earth.
According to the October 2010 issue of the journal Smithsonian, mineralogist Bob Hazen and his colleagues at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, are using ‘pressure bombs,’ small metal cylinders that compress and heat minerals to temperatures and pressures equivalent to those at the Earth’s core, ‘to decipher nothing less than the origins of life’.
In his first ‘bomb,’ Hazen encased a tiny amount of water, a chemical called pyruvate, and a powder that produces carbon dioxide, in 3 non-reactive gold capsules. He heated the capsules to 480 degrees and pressed down on them at 2,000 atmospheres. Smithsonian reported the results: When he took the capsules out two hours later, the contents had turned into tens of thousands of different compounds. In later experiments, he combined nitrogen, ammonia and other molecules plausibly present on the early earth.
In these experiments, Hazen and his colleagues created all sorts of organic molecules, including amino acids and sugars – the stuff of life (ibid. 50). Further research by Hazen showed that ‘the basic molecules of life…are able to form in all sorts of places: near hydrothermal vents, volcanoes, even on meteorites’ (ibid.).
Because of this, Hazen doubts the reigning theory of origins, which maintains that the first life began, as Darwin wrote in 1871, ‘in some warm little pond’ (ibid.). More specifically, scientists believe that the first chemicals that combined to form life were not in a little pond, but floating freely in the ocean, and that by pure chance, over a vast amount of time, they came together and eventually formed the first life.
The Smithsonian article pointed out the difficulty with this scenario: ‘How did the right building blocks [of life] get incorporated? Amino acids come in multiple forms, but only some are used by living things to form proteins. How did they find each other?’ (ibid.).
Hazen voiced similar doubts: We’ve got a prebiotic ocean and down in the ocean floor, you’ve got rocks. And basically, there’s molecules here that are floating around in solution, but it’s a very dilute soup. So, the chances of a molecule over here bumping into this one, and then actually a chemical reaction going on to form some kind of larger structure, [are] just infinitesimally small (ibid. 50-51).
Given the unlikelihood of such a scenario, combined with the results of his experiments with the pressure bombs, Hazen believes that the mineral deposits that are known to pile up around hydrothermal vents may have provided the setting for amino acids to meet, join, and eventually form the first life (ibid. 51).
Even if Hazen is right, there is still the problem of how this haphazard meeting of amino acids near a hydrothermal vent could eventually lead to the creation of life. As the Smithsonian article noted: How long will it take to go from studying how molecules interact with minerals to understanding how life began? No one knows. For one thing, SCIENTISTS HAVE NEVER SETTLED ON A DEFINITION OF LIFE. Everyone has a general idea of what it is and that self-replication and passing information from generation to generation are key’ (ibid. 52 [emphasis added]).
The main problem with Hazen’s origins scenario, as always, is the supposition that what he created with deliberate guidance in the laboratory had come into existence by itself in the distant past. This is the central dilemma plaguing scientists who are trying to re-create the first occurrence of life on Earth: creating something on purpose, and then concluding that that something could have come about by accident.
Reference: Hydrothermal Vents and the Origin of Life – Associates for Biblical Research (bible archaeology.org)
Lucidon, A. 2010. ‘Before There Was Life.’ Smithsonian 41, no. 6.
Editorial Note: This regular feature, ‘Investigating Origins’, is not intended to be a full-fledged defense of biblical creationism. It is a brief commentary on recent evolutionary speculations, typically found in secular publications. ABR’s position is that all life began exactly as described in the early chapters of Genesis, by the power of God, ex nihilo, in six 24-hour days.
Win Corduan on Evolution> One of the greatest mysteries facing humans is how life originated on Earth. Scientists have determined approximately when life began (roughly 3.8 billion years ago), but there is still intense debate about exactly how life began. One possibility has grown in popularity in the last two decades – those simple metabolic reactions emerged near ancient seafloor hot springs, enabling the leap from a non-living to a living world.
Recent research by geochemists Eoghan Reeves, Jeff Seewald, and Jill McDermott at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the first to test a fundamental assumption of this ‘metabolism first’ hypothesis and finds that it may not have been as easy as previously assumed. Instead, their findings could provide a focus for the search for life on other planets. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
In 1977, scientists discovered biological communities unexpectedly living around seafloor hydrothermal vents, far from sunlight and thriving on a chemical soup rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and sulfur, spewing from the geysers. Inspired by these findings, scientists later proposed that hydrothermal vents provided an ideal environment with all the ingredients needed for microbial life to emerge on early Earth. A central figure in this hypothesis is a simple sulfur-containing carbon compound called “methanethiol” – a supposed geologic precursor of the Acetyl-CoA enzyme present in many organisms, including humans. Scientists suspected methanethiol could have been the “starter dough” from which all life emerged.
The question Reeves and his colleagues set out to test was whether methanethiol—a critical precursor of life – could form at modern day vent sites by purely chemical means without the involvement of life. Could methanethiol be the bridge between a chemical, non-living world and the first microbial life on the planet?
Carbon dioxide, hydrogen and sulfide are the common ingredients present in hydrothermal black smoker fluids. “The thought was that making methanethiol from these basic ingredients at seafloor hydrothermal vents should therefore have been an easy process,” adds Reeves. The theory was appealing, and solved many of the basic problems with existing ideas that life may have been carried to Earth on a comet or asteroid; or that genetic material emerged first – the “RNA World” hypothesis. However, says Reeves, “it’s taken us a while to get out there and actually start to test this ‘metabolism first’ idea in the natural environment, by using modern vents as analogs for those that were around when life first began.”
And when they did get out there, the scientists were surprised by what they found.
To directly measure methanethiol, the researchers went to hydrothermal vent sites where the chemistry predicted they would find abundant methanethiol, and others where very little was predicted to form. In total, they measured the distribution of methanethiol in 38 hydrothermal fluids from multiple differing geologic environments including systems along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Guaymas Basin, the East Pacific Rise, and the Mid-Cayman Rise over a period between 2008 and 2012.
“Some systems are very rich in hydrogen, and when you have a lot of hydrogen it should, in theory, be very easy to make a lot of methanethiol,” says Reeves. The fluids were collected in isobaric gas-tight samplers (IGTs) developed by Jeffrey Seewald, which maintain fluids at their natural pressure and allow for dissolved gas analyses.
Instead of an abundance of methanethiol, the data they collected in the hydrogen-rich environments showed very little was present. “We actually found that it doesn’t matter how much hydrogen you have in black smoker fluids, you don’t seem to be making a lot of methanethiol where you should be making a lot of it,” Reeves says. Surprisingly, in the low-hydrogen environments, where much less should form, the research actually found more methanethiol than they had predicted, contradicting the original idea of how methanethiol forms. Overall, this means that jump-starting proto-metabolic reactions in hydrogen-rich early Earth hydrothermal systems through carbon-sulfur chemistry would likely have been much harder than many had assumed.
Critically, the researchers found an abundance of methanethiol being formed in low temperature fluids (below about 200°C), where hot black smoker fluid mixes with colder sea water beneath the seafloor. The presence of other telltale markers in these fluids, such as ammonia – a byproduct of biomass breakdown – strongly suggests these fluids are ‘cooking’ existing microbial organic matter. The breakdown of existing subseafloor life when conditions get too hot may therefore be responsible for producing large amounts of methanethiol.
“What we essentially found in our survey is that we don’t think methanethiol is formed by purely chemical means without the involvement of life. This might be disappointing news for anyone assuming an easy start for hydrothermal proto-metabolism,” says Reeves. “However, our finding that methanethiol may be readily forming as a breakdown product of microbial life provides further indication that life is present and widespread below the seafloor and is very exciting.”
The researchers believe this new understanding could change how we think about searching for life on other planets. “The upside is, now we have a pretty simple marker for life. Someday if we can land a rover on the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa – another place in the Solar System that may host hydrothermal vents, and possibly life – and successfully drill through the ice, the first thing it should probably try to measure is methanethiol,” Reeves says. “This is already something scientists are thinking about, and it is exciting to think this might even happen in our lifetime.”
As for the search for the origins of life, Reeves agrees that hydrothermal vents are still a very favorable place for life to emerge, but, he says, “maybe methanethiol just wasn’t a good starter dough. The hydrothermal environment is still a perfect place to support early life, and the question of how it all started is still open.”
This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA. Additional funds were provided by the WHOI Deep Ocean Exploration Institute, InterRidge, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Research Center/Cluster of Excellence MARUM “The Ocean in the Earth System” (E.P.R.).
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment.
For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu.
Luciferianism: an Introduction | The Luciferian Apotheca
The history of life at hydrothermal vents – ScienceDirect
The Origin of Life in Alkaline Hydrothermal Vents – PubMed (nih.gov)
‘Missing reservoir’ of Earth’s water may have originated from the sun – CNET
Reinforcements From The Future – Part 2 | Wild Force | Full Episode | E25 | Power Rangers Official – Bing video
How did life begin and evolve on Earth, and has it evolved elsewhere in the Solar System? | Science Mission Directorate (nasa.gov)
The research team, from right to left:
Co-authors Eoghan Reeves, Jill McDermott, and Jeff Seewald and their WHOI colleagues Frieder Klein and Sean Sylva used isobaric gas-tight samplers (IGTs) to collect and analyze samples of hydrothermal vent fluids.
(Jason pilot Scott Hansen peeks out from the background) on a cruise to the Cayman Trough in 2012. Seewald developed the samplers to collect fluids, some exceeding 700°F, and return them to the surface under pressure to preserve their physical and chemical composition. (Julie Huber, copyright Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution).
To collect their samples, the researchers went to hydrothermal vent sites where the chemistry predicted they would find abundant methanethiol, and others where very little was predicted to form. In total, they measured the distribution of methanethiol in 38 hydrothermal fluids from multiple differing geologic environments including systems along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Guaymas Basin, the East Pacific Rise, and the Mid-Cayman Rise – an unprecedented survey – over a period between 2008 and 2012. (Meg Tivey, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution).
Making methanethiol from the chemicals available in hydrothermal black smoker fluids was thought to have been an easy process. To test this theory, researchers collected fluids in isobaric gas-tight samplers (IGTs) from black smokers and analyzed them for the presence of methanethiol. (Chris German, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution). Clear hot spring fluids spew from a talc structure at the Von Damm vent field, a mile and a half beneath the Caribbean Sea.
The researchers show fluids emanating from Von Damm and other hot spring areas around the global mid-ocean ridge system contain a sulfur compound, methanethiol, that is indicative of pyrolyzed subsurface life.
The red laser dots are 10cm apart, for scale. Photograph courtesy of the
Little Hercules ROV, NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, Mid-Cayman
Rise Expedition 2011. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Scientists discovered an unexpected force that may have helped create
life on Earth. By Joshua Hawkins
Scientists may have found more evidence of how life on Earth came to be.
The culprit? Solar wind. According to a new study, solar wind could be one of the forces responsible for helping provide the water molecules needed to create the Earth’s oceans, rivers, and lakes. The new idea could help us understand more about how life on Earth came to be, as well as whether or not other life might be somewhere out there in the rest of the universe.
How Solar Wind Helped Create Life on Earth.
Luke Daly, a lecturer of Planetary Geoscience at the University of Glasgow published the new study with several co-authors in Nature Astronomy. According to Daly, solar wind played a crucial role in helping deliver enough water molecules to the planet. Previously studies believed that asteroids that struck the planet had brought organic molecules to the planet. Because water-rich asteroids have reportedly slammed into the Earth, scientists saw them as a firm explanation of how our planet became filled with it.
However, Daly says that there is too much water on the Earth to attribute it all to those asteroids. Water-rich asteroids have more heavy hydrogen as part of their composition, especially compared to the water found on the Earth. The remaining asteroids were also too low on water to provide the number of molecules needed to fill the planet.
So, he and his co-authors began looking somewhere else. What was likely to bring enough molecules to the planet to help contribute to the current state of the oceans, rivers, and lakes? The answer had been shining on them the entire time: the sun.
How dust helped create water.
According to Daly, the Sun has very low levels of heavy hydrogen called deuterium. The idea, then, was that solar winds helped transport H20 molecules from the Sun into the dust that it picks up. As such, the dust transferred the H20 onto the surface of the asteroids that it impacted, too.
“We can’t put bits of the Sun directly into the Earth because that’d be bad
for everybody involved,” Daly told Inverse. This unexpected force may be responsible for life on Earth (inverse.com)
“So that’s why the solar wind idea is really nice, because the hydrogen coming from the solar wind comes from the Sun.” To check the theory, Daly and his
co-authors looked at asteroid samples captured by the Japanese Hayabusa mission in 2010. While inspecting them, they found that the asteroids’ “damage layer” shows H20 molecules. These molecules could have only
come from solar wind, Daly says.
“The early solar system was an incredibly dusty place,” Daly told Inverse. “There’s tons and tons of tiny dust particles flying around alongside these asteroids, getting impacted by a very energetic young Sun.” Daly says that the Sun implanted the hydrogen in the dust. In turn, the dust was able to impact it into the asteroids. The Earth then swept up that dust. The Earth then swept up the asteroids, too. Together this produced the reservoir of water that we see today.
While the study is a push forward for the origins of life on Earth, it’s bigger than just that. It could also inform scientists’ perspectives on the possibility
of life on other planets.
Scientists discovered an unexpected force that may have helped create life on Earth appeared first on BGR.
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