Changeable hydrothermal media as potential cradle of life on a planet

Abstract

According to the elaborated systemic concept, a prebiotic microsystem has a chance to be transformed into primary living unit (probiont) only under nonequilibrium oscillating conditions. This transition proceeds through three successive kinds of transformations. First, a prebiotic microsystem must acquire the specific critical properties being at the unstable state of the bifurcate transition. Then it should be relatively stabilized due to balanced oscillations between the initial and the forward states (there appears the paradoxical state of ‘stabilized instability’). The decisive transformation to the living state is connected with the inversion of the ratio of ‘free energy to entropy contribution’ when the free energy input in the microsystem becomes higher than the entropy input. Changeable nonequilibrium conditions are most typical to hydrothermal systems in comparison with other aqueous media of the Earth. In this context the hydrothermal medium seems very suitable to be considered as a potential cradle of life on a planet. To characterize a scale of the thermodynamic and physico-chemical fluctuations some hydrothermal systems in Kamchatka peninsula were explored. The period of the pressure microoscillations in Mutnovsky and Pauzhetsky hydrothermal systems range from 10 to 30 min, and the amplitude is 0.2–0.7 bar. From time to time the amplitude of the fluctuations significantly rises due to spontaneous increase of activity of the nearest volcanoes. Similar results were obtained during the exploration of thermodynamic and chemical fluctuations in Mura hydrothermal field in Slovenia: the period of the water pressure oscillations is 60–70 min, and the average amplitude about 0.5 bar. Temperature and some chemical parameters oscillate in this field with the same period. These data can be used to conduct advanced laboratory experiments on prebiotic organic synthesis under nonequilibrium oscillating conditions. Some universal aspects of this concept may allow us to better understand the origin-of-life process in the Universe.