2023-05-18 16:43:00
According to a new study, not lightning, but the sun is responsible for the fact that life was able to develop on earth.
Greenbelt – How did life originate on earth? To answer this fundamental question, many researchers are trying to find out under what conditions amino acids might have formed on early Earth. Amino acids are considered important building blocks for life, from which proteins develop, among other things. While researchers have previously assumed that lightning strikes may have played an important role in the emergence of life, a new study shows that the sun may also have played a major role.
This was the finding of NASA researcher Vladimir Airapetian from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, chemist Kensei Kobayashi (Yokohama National University) and a team of researchers. To do this, they created a mixture of gases that was composed in the way that the early earth’s atmosphere must have been structured according to today’s understanding. They bombarded this mixture of carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen, water and methane in variable amounts with protons to simulate particles from the sun or ignited sparks to simulate lightning strikes.
Research team bombards gases with simulated solar particles
As long as the methane content was more than 0.5 percent, a detectable amount of amino acids and carboxylic acids was formed in the gas mixture as a result of the bombardment with simulated solar particles. The simulated lightning strikes, on the other hand, required a 15 percent methane concentration in order for amino acids to form at all. “And even with 15 percent methane, the production rate of amino acids from lightning is a million times lower than from protons,” explains Airapetian in one Nasa announcement. The research team’s study was in the journal Life published.
Apparently, the particles from the sun are a more efficient source of energy than lightning. In the past, researchers had at times assumed that lightning strikes started life on earth. But that now seems unlikely, given what Airapetian knows: “There are no lightning bolts in cold conditions, and early Earth was under a fairly weak sun.” That’s not to say the start of life on Earth couldn’t be related to lightning, Airapetian continued: “Lightning seems less likely now, and solar particles are more likely.”
Powerful solar flares may have spawned life on Earth
As early as 2016, the researcher was involved in a study that showed that the sun was about 30 percent weaker during the first 100 million Earth years. On the other hand, so-called “superflares”, strong solar flares, which today only occur about every 100 years, were almost commonplace. They formed about every three to ten days and sent particles towards Earth at almost the speed of light. The particles that collided with Earth’s atmosphere may have started the chemical reactions that eventually gave rise to life. (tab)
The planet Jupiter also has an influence on the habitability of the earth, as a study shows.
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