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A warm little pond on present day Earth on the Bumpass Hell trail in Lassen Volcanic National Park in California. Scientists found new evidence to support the “warm little ponds” theory of the beginnings of life on Earth, which puts the ponds as a top candidate for the initial\u00a0favorable conditions for the appearance of living organisms. The new paper places\u00a0the emergence of life into the process\u00a0of Earth’s formation, while the planet was still being pelted by numerous meteorites. Their calculations suggest the meteorites deposited the necessary chemicals into Earth’s ponds, where wet and dry cycles bonded basic molecular building blocks in the ponds’ nutrient-rich broth into self-replicating RNA molecules. These molecules constituted the first genetic code for life on the planet. In the present study, scientists examined both leading rival causes\u00a0for origins of life\u2014hydrothermal vents and space dust\u2014and eliminated them based on their inability to fulfill the necessary environmental conditions to form RNA molecules.<\/p>\n Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n Ben K. D. Pearce, Ralph E. Pudritz, Dmitry A. Semenov, and Thomas K. Henning<\/p>\n Corresponding author:<\/strong><\/p>\n Ben Pearce, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Origins Institute, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Email:\u00a0pearcbe@mcmaster.ca<\/a><\/p>\n
(Image by Ben K.D. Pearce, McMaster University)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n