Lightning May Have Triggered Life on Earth Millions of Years Ago

A new study suggests that millions of years ago, before creatures subdued the earth, lightning strikes were the precursors to life, supplying prebiotic phosphorus reduction on the planet.

Dinosaurs aren't the only things that have fossil records. Lightning has one too. Brief electric flashes in the sky are known as ephemeral events -- here and gone in a blink of an eye. However, there are times when lightning strikes the ground, and under such conditions, the discharge of an electrical current creates a root-like system of melted soil.

The series of tubes is known to geologists as fulgurite. This special mineral-like object may offer critical clues about the history of essential elements for life according to a study.

Analyzing Lightning Fossils

All forms of life need phosphorus. Benjamin Hess, a Yale University geologist, explains that the chemical element is used in biomolecules like DNA, RNA, and fats that compose cell membranes.

The universal need for phosphorus led experts to hypothesize that an abundance of the chemical element may have been significant to the emergence of the earliest organisms on Earth. But the question was, where did it come from?

Up until recently, scientists believed that the prebiotics for life was supplied by some meteorites. Laboratory experiments showed that phosphorus from meteorites could form some of the basic organic molecules needed to sustain life.

However, Hess and his colleagues suggest that a different source of phosphorus provided the necessary precursors to trigger the expansion of life and organisms on the planet.

According to the study published in the journal Nature Communications entitled, "Lightning strikes as a major facilitator of prebiotic phosphorus reduction on early Earth" the chemical element may not have originated from meteorites but from lightning strikes.

Lightning strikes
Pixabay / Pexel


Unravelling Lightning and Fulgurites

Hess explains that the study begun with a stroke of luck as an undergraduate at Wheaton College had lighting struck the property. This piqued Hess' curiosity. Although fulgurite samples are common, they are still a mystery.

At the University of Leeds, England, Hess placed the fulgurite sample under the scrutiny of an electron microscope. There, using high magnification, scientists noticed bizarre spherules within the fulgurite unknown to the team.

Researchers found that the dots were Fe3P or schreibersite, a composition in a meteorite that has been previously believed to the supplier of phosphorus during the early days of the planet.

Hess and his colleagues propose that there would have been 1 billion - 5 billion lighting strikes during the early days of Earth annualy, resulting in a high number of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. Some of these could have produced fulgurite that when broken down, release phosphorus into the environment necessary for early life.

Danna Qasim, NASA Cosmic Ice Laboratory geologist not involved with the study, says that the authors provide conviving evidence that lightning strikes had a vital contribution of schreibersite on the planet.


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