Life on Earth may have been kickstarted by ‘microlightning’ created by crashing waterfalls and ocean waves, a new study has revealed.
Tiny ‘microlightning’ sparks are generated when water droplets from crashing waves collide and break up.
Scientists from Stanford University created the microscopic electrical charges in a lab and mixed them with gases found in the early atmosphere.
The combination formed chains of organic atoms (molecules), including the building blocks of DNA.
Until now, scientists have thought that countless lightning strikes from the earliest clouds over Earth’s surface produced the electricity for a life-creating event roughly 3.5 billion years ago.
The decade-old Miller-Urey hypothesis had plenty of the flaws, including the fact that lightning occurs very infrequently, making it hard for scientists to believe there were enough strikes to provide life-giving energy to the entire ocean.
But the new ‘Microlightning’ theory opens the door to these chemical reactions happening all the time and everywhere there was water on prehistoric Earth.
Professor Richard Zare, from Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, said: ‘On early Earth, there were water sprays all over the place – into crevices or against rocks, and they can accumulate and create this chemical reaction.
Scientists believe they have debunked a theory that lightning strikes sparked life on Earth, instead theorizing that water droplets carried electrical charges which mixed with the planet’s atmosphere to create organic compounds
Prior studies have concluded that Earth’s early atmosphere likely contained a collection of different chemicals, including carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrogen (N₂), methane, ammonia, and hydrogen.
Some of this research has suggested that the atmosphere was a mostly CO₂-N₂ mixture with less methane and ammonia.
This includes the 1952 Miller-Urey hypothesis by American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey.
Over 70 years later, Zare’s team discovered that one of the organic substances formed by the microlightning was uracil – an organic molecule with carbon-nitrogen bonds.
Zare noted that carbon-nitrogen bonds are an essential ingredient in the compounds that make up living things today, including proteins, enzymes, and chlorophyll.
Uracil is one of the key components of both DNA and RNA, the blueprints which hold all of your genetic information.
Specifically, uracil is one of the four nucleotide bases in RNA, the single-stranded genetic material which act like molecular assistants for DNA.
Meanwhile, DNA is the double-stranded swirl of genetic material that holds the instructions for all of the body’s cells to work.
Finding the building blocks of life after this extraordinary process appears to prove that it likely wasn’t lightning strikes or a meteor that deposited organic material on Earth over three billion years ago – it was in the water the whole time.
Researchers from Stanford discovered one of the organic substance created by ‘microlightning’ is uracil, one of the building blocks of RNA and DNA
So, where did the electricity in prehistoric water come from? Zare and his team discovered different types of charges formed when water was broken up by a spray or splash.
Specifically, larger droplets frequently carried a positive charge, while very tiny droplets carried a negative charge.
Normally, water atoms all have the same number of protons and electrons. However, the different charges are a result of the splashing water losing or gaining varying numbers of electrons as they become small droplets.
Simply put, when a wave crashes into the shore or droplets spray out of a waterfall, water particles are losing electrons (becoming positively-charged) or gaining electrons (becoming negatively-charged) as they split off into smaller droplets.
The new study, published in Science Advances, used high-speed cameras to reveal sparks of electricity when two oppositely charged droplets came close together – forming microlightning.
Zare added that even though the sparks couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, they carry plenty of energy.
In an experiment, sending sprays of water into a mixture of nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, and ammonia gases created three organic compounds.
These include hydrogen cyanide, an amino acid called glycine, and uracil.
‘We usually think of water as so benign, but when it’s divided in the form of little droplets, water is highly reactive,’ Zare said, adding that crashing waves or waterfalls appear to be the true origins of life.
