14 DAY TRIAL // While it is commonly accepted that life sparked from a pre-biotic state of chemical compounds that somehow mixed up in an organic form, what exactly caused this whole complex process to occur is still subject to speculation. Water and electricity (from thunders) are the two most circulated factors that appear to have influenced the event, but now a new theory is emerging. It seems that a kind of diamond, believed to have been more common during the time life appeared, has a unique property that might have given the life occurrence phenomenon a push in the right direction.
The new study claims that the primordial soup of basic life ingredients that existed on Earth's surface soon after the planet formed was influenced by the surface of certain minerals towards spawning life. Namely, it involves the presence of hydrogenated diamonds, regular diamonds with an outer layer of hydrogen atoms, which determine a rigorous order of the nearby molecules. They are highly hydrophobic, pushing away all the water molecules they come in contact with. When wet, they arrange all water molecules as if they were frozen (in a similar fashion to what electricity does to human hair).
This reorganization of the molecular structure might have mixed up the right ingredients present at the right location at the right time, suggest specialists. This conclusion is backed up by a recent research that has demonstrated that certain DNA and RNA building blocks form regulated patterns on the surface of graphite, which chemically resembles the diamond.
Hydrogenated diamonds are obtained now only in laboratory conditions, but back then, the intense volcanic activity of the planet is thought to have yielded enough of the material. “In nature, diamond hydrogenation is likely to occur in or in the vicinity of volcanoes known to emit a variety of hot gases including hydrogen,” claims Andrei Sommer from the University of Ulm in Germany.
It is not certain yet how much of the hydrogenated diamond material was actually present on the planet surface so far in time, but even a scarce presence of it is more than enough for life to emerge. “I think it is not important that a lot of hydronenated diamond was available,” shares Horst-Dieter Foersterling from Philipps University of Marburg, not involved in the research. “Once the first evolution process has started in a very special location [such as a tiny patch of hydrogenated diamond], and stable DNA strands have formed, a special location is no more necessary.”