New Science Appears to Confirm a Theory That Could Reveal the Origin of All Life Max Plenke - Tech.Mic
go to original August 30, 2015

Researchers created "chemical gardens" - chimney-like structures normally found at bubbling vents on the seafloor - in the laboratory. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

New science from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory may finally have an answer to a question billions of years old: Where did life come from?

The study, led by Laura M. Barge and published in German science journal Angewandte Chemie, demonstrates how vents on the ocean floor can generate enough electricity to power a small lightbulb. It was a eureka moment, one that seems to support a theory first formed in 1989: that these ocean floor vents were the source of an electric zap that may have shocked the first life on Earth into existence, like a miniature version of Frankenstein's monster.

The research seems to run contrary to the religious theory of intelligent design. Life may have begun with a spark — but if so, it wasn't divine. It was a tiny but constant jolt of electricity on the ocean floor, the result of organic chemistry.

The study is the latest update of the submarine alkaline hydrothermal theory, a concept first formulated in 1989 by NASA's Michael Russell. He spoke to Mic about his process.

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