Primitive ponds may have provided a suitable environment for brewing up Earth’s first life forms, more so than oceans, a new MIT study finds.
Primitive ponds may have provided a suitable environment for brewing up Earth’s first life forms, more so than oceans, a new MIT study finds.
Researchers report that shallow bodies of water, on the order of 10 centimeters deep, could have held high concentrations of what many scientists believe to be a key ingredient for jump-starting life on Earth: nitrogen.
In shallow ponds, nitrogen, in the form of nitrogenous oxides, would have had a good chance of accumulating enough to react with other compounds and give rise to the first living organisms. In much deeper oceans, nitrogen would have had a harder time establishing a significant, life-catalyzing presence, the researchers say.
“Our overall message is, if you think the origin of life required fixed nitrogen, as many people do, then it’s tough to have the origin of life happen in the ocean,” says lead author Sukrit Ranjan, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “It’s much easier to have that happen in a pond.”
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: Satellite photo of Don Juan Pond. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, Landsat 7 Project Science Office; MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
