Zapping clay with a high-power laser is all it took to re-create the original spark of life on Earth.
A bit more specifically, researchers used the Prague-based Asterix Laser System to zap clay in an attempt at simulating the energy of a speeding asteroid smashing into the planet. Doing this, the group discovered, produced all four chemical bases needed to make RNA, a simpler relative of DNA — the building blocks of life on this planet.
The team’s success is, obviously, a very early step in what’s looking like a very long study, and while the findings do not prove that this is how life started on Earth some 4 billion years ago, it does support the theory.
“These findings suggest that the emergence of terrestrial life is not the result of an accident but a direct consequence of the conditions on the primordial Earth and its surroundings,” the researchers concluded in the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
RNA has been made before, using chemical mixes and pressure, but this is the first time it’s been proven that energy from a space crash could trigger the chemical reaction necessary for its production.
The laser used (pictured above) is almost 500 feet long. When it was fired, it did so for a fraction of second and the energy produced turned the clay into chemical soup. Lead author Svatopluk Civis of the Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry in Prague said that the power was actually so intense that for less than a billionth of a second, it was equivalent to the output of a couple of nuclear power plants.
Numerically speaking — it produced what would be around a billion kilowatts of energy for that split second, over the distance of a fraction of an inch, generating heat of more than 7,600°F.
The aforementioned theory that this group is looking into refers to a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment. During this time, the solar system’s asteroid belt was bigger and stray space rocks hit Earth more often; a frequency of about 10 times more than before or after this period. The theory is that Earth was hit by an asteroid with enough speed and force to result in the instantaneous production of RNA, thus beginning life on Earth.
Reaction to the group’s success was mixed; some applauded the results, while others called into question the fact that the results were so small, they can’t possibly support such a large theory.
Research is ongoing.
Via: Phys.org
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