The thunderbolts could have provided enough bioavailable phosphorus to contribute to the generation of life on Earth, according to a study released Tuesday, which points to the existence of a previously underappreciated source of essential nutrients on the planet.
The emergence of life on Earth depended on a precise cocktail of critical ingredients, one of which is bioavailable or reactive phosphorus, orone key component of DNA, RNA and cell membrane lipids.
The above-mentioned study, conducted by a team from Yale University (USA), and published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications, reveals that At the beginning of Earth’s formation, reactive phosphorus was trapped in insoluble minerals.
The research suggests that an exception to this was the mineral known as schreibersite, which is highly reactive and is said to produce phosphorus capable of forming organic molecules.
The predominant source of schreibersite, however, is meteorites, and according to the publication, the origin of life was thought to be related to lightning strikes from alien rocks.
The study’s expert and author, Bejamin Hess, of the aforementioned American university, and a group of colleagues proposed an alternative source of schreibersite and the phosphorus it contains.
According to this, using spectroscopic techniques, schreibersite was found in the glassy minerals formed by lightning in certain clay-rich soils.
Estimating the amount of schreiberite that each lightning bolt could have produced and the suitable land area at the beginning of planet Earth, The experts calculated that the rays could have represented between 110 and 11,000 kilograms of phosphorus per year.
It is a wide variety, and enough to possibly feed the first human forms. It’s also an amount that would eventually surpass meteor strikes, according to this study.
Using simulation models of Earth’s early phase climate, experts predicted that although meteor strikes began to decline after the moon’s formation 4.5 billion years ago, the number of lightning strikes and phosphors they delivered, they meteorites by 3.5 billion years, which coincides with the origin of life.