• Updated Urey-Miller experiment strongly points to lightning as catalyst

    From Pro Plyd@21:1/5 to All on Fri Aug 16 23:59:47 2024
    https://www.space.com/the-universe/earth/was-life-on-earth-sparked-by-cloud-to-ground-lightning-strikes

    ...
    One of the major questions regarding the
    beginning of life on Earth revolves around
    how the building blocks for life, such as
    nitrogen and carbon, emerged on our young
    planet. The three leading theories include
    delivery by asteroids and comets that
    crashed into Earth, emissions from deep-sea
    vents, and cloud-to-ground lightning strikes.

    According to a team of chemists from Harvard
    University, that last option is looking
    mighty likely.
    ...
    This is far from the first experiment to
    suggest cloud-to-ground lightning as a
    potential key to unlocking life on Earth.
    American chemist and Nobel Prize winner Harold
    Urey and his research student Stanley Miller
    performed a similar experiment, appropriately
    dubbed the Urey-Miller experiment, in 1953.
    ...
    While the science still holds, we now suspect
    the young atmosphere is comprised of carbon
    dioxide and nitrogen. Thus, the Harvard team
    performed an updated version of the Urey-Miller
    experiment.
    ...


    The paper is here

    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2400819121
    Mimicking lightning-induced electrochemistry
    on the early Earth

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