Early Earth’s organic building blocks

Abstract

Researchers have long debated how the molecular components needed for life came to exist in the bleak environment of the early Earth about 4 billion years ago. Researchers now present experimental evidence for a new possibility—that metals from iron-rich meteorites pelting the planet from above, as well as from volcanic particles spewing from within, catalyzed the fixation of carbon dioxide, the dominant gas in the atmosphere at the time. This helped build basic carbon-containing molecules such as hydrocarbons, aldehydes, and alcohols, which could then perform the reactions that generated more complex biotic molecules. “We have closed a gap in the story of initiating life,” says Oliver Trapp, a chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, who led the work ( Sci. Rep. 2023, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-33741-8 ). The idea hit Trapp like a meteorite—literally. One day about 6 years ago, he was examining a meteorite he had purchased that was part