14 DAY TRIAL // Life appeared on Earth several billion years ago. Humans on the other hand, have been around for a little over 250,000 years. We know much about mathematics, physics, biology, etc., yet, one of the biggest mysteries today is related to how life first began on our planet. Now researchers say that diamonds might have been a key component in the assembly of the building blocks of life.
The leading theory regarding how life appeared on Earth involves the presence of a primordial soup of precursor chemicals, containing simple amino acids that were later assembled into complex polymers to create the first living organisms. Simple amino acids are relatively common across the universe, but the mechanism required to create these complex polymers out of amino acids is largely unknown.
Diamonds are an alotrope of carbon known to have existed on Earth long before life began. New experiments now show that in the presence of hydrogen, diamonds are able to create layers of water on the surface, confirming a theory that predicted this effect more than three decades ago. And as we all know, life would not be possible without the presence of water. Additionally, the researchers found that the key reactions required to create the chemicals necessary for the birth of life might be related to a property of diamonds known as electrical conductivity.
According to the results of the experiments, hydrogenated diamonds present in Earth's atmosphere interacting with primitive molecules bonding to their surface could have generated a reaction powerful enough for the assembly of complex polymers, which in turn led to the appearance of life.
An alternative theory regarding the appearance of life on our planet, known as panspermia, suggests that life was actually brought here by other cosmic bodies such as comets or meteors. Although the new study doesn't prove how life began on Earth, it does bring some support to the primordial soup of precursor chemicals theory.
"Hydrogenated diamond advances to the best of all possible origin-of-life platforms," said the research team. The study was conducted by Andrei Sommer, Dan Zhu and Hand-Joerg Fecht of the University of Ulm.