Did lightning spark life on Earth?
Scientists say bolts could have unlocked a key ingredient for life.
Artists rendition of lightning strikes. Credit: Lucy Entwisle.
A quintillion lightning strikes over a billion years may have helped kickstart life on Earth, according to scientists from Yale University, US, and the University of Leeds, UK.
The earliest undisputed signs of life show up around 3.5 billion years ago, although researchers have good reason to suspect that the whole affair of living could have got going much earlier. But there’s a small problem: life didn’t have the right ingredients yet.
The organic molecules that make up the building blocks of life – including sugars, enzymes, protein and DNA – didn’t exist naturally on the very early Earth, and the elements needed to make them (like carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen) were bound up in the rocks, atmosphere and early oceans.
| UPDATED: 07:28, Wed, Mar 17, 2021
Link copied Sign up for FREE for the biggest new releases, reviews and tech hacks
SUBSCRIBE Invalid email
When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters.
Sometimes they ll include recommendations for other related newsletters or services we offer.
Our Privacy Notice explains more about how we use your data, and your rights.
You can unsubscribe at any time.
Groundbreaking new research by geologists at the University of Leeds has found a link between lightning strikes and the origins of life on Earth. Until now, scientists have agreed the key ingredients of life were brought to Earth by meteorites bombarding the planet more than four billion years ago. The newly published research, however, has found some of the same minerals may have been brought down by billions of lightning strikes - and the same may be true for alien life on Earth-like planets far beyond our solar system.
E-Mail
IMAGE: An illustration of early Earth, as it would have looked around 4 billion years ago view more
Credit: Lucy Entwisle
Lightning strikes were just as important as meteorites in creating the perfect conditions for life to emerge on Earth, geologists say.
Minerals delivered to Earth in meteorites more than 4 billion years ago have long been advocated as key ingredients for the development of life on our planet.
Scientists believed minimal amounts of these minerals were also brought to early Earth through billions of lightning strikes.
But now researchers from the University of Leeds have established that lightning strikes were just as significant as meteorites in performing this essential function and allowing life to manifest.