Scientists resolve a 3.5 billion-year-old mystery of life

From University of Washington

"Most astrobiologists believe that life in some form is likely to exist away from Earth. But new research demonstrates that life as we know it on Earth might never have come to exist at all if not for a key element delivered to the planet by meteorites billions of years ago.

Scientists at the University of Washington and the University of South Florida found that during the Hadean and Archean eons – the first two of the four principal eons of the Earth’s earliest history – the heavy bombardment by meteorites provided reactive phosphorus essential for creating the earliest life on Earth.

When released in water, that reactive phosphorus could be incorporated into prebiotic molecules, and the researchers documented its presence in early Archean limestone, showing it was abundant some 3.5 billion years ago."

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