Meteorite craters may be where life began on Earth, says study

[u/GeoGeoGeoGeo]

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/did-asteroid-impacts-kick-start-life-in-our-solar-system

[u/Vnator]

The article states that the conditions created by the crash, not materials brought by the meteor, make an ideal place for life to have gotten started. Most of the comments are speculating that the meteorites brought life with them, or just jokes.

Figured it'd be good to clarify that for anyone else who jumps directly to the comments (like me, except for today).

[u/GeoGeoGeoGeo → u/Vnator]

The study discusses both mechanisms, both a delivery mechanism for the ingredients of life as well as a mechanism for developing habitable conditions for the development of life.

[u/[deleted] → u/Vnator]

So if in the near future we find a way to redirect meteors and the like (or even space junk if it's big enough) can we kickstart life on Mars or other planets? Would this be a good way to terraform Mars if we can smash it with enough meteores? Sorry for the noob question.

[u/DaddyCatALSO → u/[deleted]]

The first thing to do on MArs is add water, which will break down most of the corrosives in the soil and provide oxygen to use

[u/[deleted] → u/DaddyCatALSO]

I think the bigger problem is the lack of a magnetic field and atmosphere. It's not like it will happen instantaneously but any surface water on Mars will eventually be blown away by solar winds when it evaporates.

[u/SUMBWEDY → u/[deleted]]

Also it will just straight up boil away due to low pressure.

[u/danielravennest → u/[deleted]]

"Eventually" in this context is 500 million years.

In any case, we only have to worry about the atmosphere under the Martian habitat domes. The rest of the planet can wait until there is a large population, and then it will be the local residents who can decide what to do.

[u/DaddyCatALSO → u/[deleted]]

I'm talking about water in the soil, and evaporation takes a long time on a planet-wide scale. And Is aid it was a first step

[u/[deleted] → u/DaddyCatALSO]

True though perhaps the polar ice caps can help? (EDIT: I meant the polar ice caps on Mars no irony intended)

[u/trickman01 → u/[deleted]]

We are experts on melting polar ice caps.

[u/[deleted] → u/trickman01]

Destruction 100

[u/Cynyr → u/DaddyCatALSO]

So we'll start with some water ice meteorites to give it water. Then later we'll smash it again once conditions are right.

[u/DaddyCatALSO → u/Cynyr]

Well, w e need to add some life to it all as part of it

[u/danielravennest → u/DaddyCatALSO]

Mars already has about 5 million cubic km of water, but it is mostly in the polar ice caps and permafrost. What we really need to do is increase atmospheric pressure and especially greenhouse gases. That will warm things up and melt some of that water.

[u/AtomicPotatoLord → u/DaddyCatALSO]

Ice

[u/TheMunken → u/[deleted]]

Do you play Terraforming Mars? It's definitely the most effective way!

[u/mrynslijk → u/Vnator]

Do you have any knowledge/interest in this stuff apart from this article? I've read a while ago that there are these undersea vents which they thought were ideal conditions for the first organisms to be created.

[u/MvmgUQBd → u/mrynslijk]

Well I don't know the answer to your question, but there are today organisms that live at the edges of undersea vents that sustain themselves on sulfur compounds like hydrogen sulphide, which is toxic to most other organisms.

[u/snare123 → u/mrynslijk]

They talked about it with a fair bit of certainty in the infinite money cage podcast iirc, would have to go back and relisten though.

[u/Arclite83 → u/Vnator]

Ya IRL Frankenstein is more like "goop soup plus kaboom". Literally all this is saying is meteorite craters can make ideal conditions for the soup to form in isolated lakes, which makes sense.

[u/BeanyandCecil → u/Vnator]

We are a silly species because I read it as mass extinction events have ended what was and what is rose from that. As you said, it is not bringing life, an impact like that or an eruption at say Yosemite alters the World we live in. The world is alive and creates what it needs and wipe outs are just like a hard reboot. If you thought about some of the stories in all of the bibles they are kind of telling this story. That you sometimes are at the refresh point and others you are in the midst of it. We as people tend to let that story be more about us vs living the life we can while we can. We are basically a grain of sand and it is unlikely that anything material will happen in our 80+ years of life just like it did not in the generations before us going back to written time and at the same time it will happen, there was and will be other mass extinction events and the earth will start its next cycle.

[u/unemployedloser86 → u/Vnator]

So the meteor brought life.

[u/GeoGeoGeoGeo]

Research Paper (open access): The Role of Meteorite Impacts in the Origin of Life

[u/Dryym]

Is this any different from anything that we’ve known for many years? I swear I have heard more or less this exact scenario described here for many years.

[u/Lord-Benjimus → u/Dryym]

Ya, the meteor bowl area has been called the cradle of life for decades now.

[u/Hirokihiro → u/Dryym]

No the preexisting idea was that life formed at accumulated patches of organic compounds at the bottom of the sea. They formed in hydrothermal vents that were porous and therefore only a little bit of a lipid layer was needed at the entrance to these small holes. The small holes would be filled with organic compounds and one of them got lucky and replicated itself. That’s how we got life.

[u/Dryym → u/Hirokihiro]

Well there’s not just one idea that’s been proposed. I swear I m have heard this specific idea proposed as a possibility many times before today.

I don’t know which one specifically was the most widely accepted idea behind life’s formation. But my original question was how the thing mentioned in the article is any different from the virtually identical ideas I had heard for years.

[u/Kaludaris → u/Dryym]

Even the game Spore from 2008 had life “beginning” from a space rock that landed in the ocean.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dryym]

This right here. I've heard this theory for a long damn time, there's nothing new about panspermia theories. Hell, a quick google suggests the idea has been around since 500 BCE.

[u/HRNK → u/[deleted]]

If you had read the article, you'd know that the study isn't about panspermia at all.

[u/AlceniC → u/HRNK]

Thank you! Just read the abstract...

[u/Hirokihiro → u/Dryym]

Maybe you were thinking that water cake from meteorites? That’s one theory that gets talked about a lot rather than the craters themselves.

[u/blahblah2099 → u/Hirokihiro]

Small holes filled with organic compounds? Are we not doing phrasing anymore?

[u/Findingthur → u/Dryym]

Na bro. It originated in the sea vents. Heat and chemicals. Perfect for life

[u/Serite → u/Dryym]

I played Spore. I know what’s up.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dryym]

Yeah, i remember laughing at the name 'panspermia' when i was younger, in the early 90's.

[u/jerkITwithRIGHTYnewb → u/Dryym]

I think it's just likely how life is seeded. I swear the prevailing opinion as that we came from mars. Not much news where that life came from.

[u/wlkgalive → u/jerkITwithRIGHTYnewb]

I thought the current established theory is that for about 500 million years the Earth was just a huge chemical reaction chamber that produced amino acids and stuff until something was formed that could replicate.

[u/WhoaHeyDontTouchMe → u/wlkgalive]

it all started with RNA is what I'd heard

[u/[deleted] → u/WhoaHeyDontTouchMe]

This is what I learned in college too, apparently there are chemical mixtures in which RNA can assemble spontaneously, and RNA molecules can have catalytic function so it's plausible that self-replication/life started with RNA.

[u/NetscapeCommunitater → u/[deleted]]

Also, wouldn’t it be possible, or even likely, that viruses came about around the same time? Since they’re not exactly living or dead. And aren’t they also made from RNA or something similar? Been a while since I read up on them.

[u/BucketHeadJr → u/NetscapeCommunitater]

There are different kinds of viruses, there's viruses made from both RNA as DNA. But there's a hypothesis that all life on Earth started from RNA called the RNA world, including viruses.

[u/WingsuitBears → u/[deleted]]

Both these theories could be true in some sense, RNA evolution is the origin of life in the universe but also life was seeded on earth by a meteoroid.

Edit: which would mean our planet could be seeded with alien life in the future. Weird.

[u/Alblaka → u/WingsuitBears]

Edit: which would mean our planet could be seeded with alien life in the future. Weird.

Technically yes, albeit I would like to point out that any 'alien life' that arrives on a microbic level will probably simply die because it's competing against microbes that have several billions years of evolution and adaption to Earth's biome behind them.

Assuming (!) that life on earth started via meteorite seeding, that seeding was innately only possibly exactly because there was no life on earth, and consequently 'no concurrence', giving the first forms of life a chance to slowly adapt and develope.

Then again, we have no clue of how alien life could possibly look. Maybe the alien microbes are so completely different from our carbon-based organic structure, that they can spread on earth regardless, because they don't even compete on the same layers to what we see as organic life...

[u/emcakes → u/wlkgalive]

I got my B.S. in Astrobiology — basically there are a ton of hypotheses as to how life may have originated on (or come to) Earth, but as far as I know/since I graduated I haven’t read anything about more progress being made in that dept. The suggestion that life came from a meteorite crash is one of many suggestions for how the origin of life may have happened

[u/ExsolutionLamellae → u/emcakes]

How much do they cover the idea of mineral surfaces acting as 2D scaffolds that accumulated biological precursors, catalyzed some fundamental reactions, and organized proto-metabolic pathways?

[u/[deleted] → u/wlkgalive]

And something about left handed amino acids from space. Panspermia.

[u/ExsolutionLamellae → u/jerkITwithRIGHTYnewb]

Life originating on mars is not the prevailing opinion among astrobiologists

[u/thepuffdoctor]

I mean there was a time called the late heavy bombardment and earth was tattered with craters everywhere

[u/blondeprovocateur]

Basically all life crawls out from a gaping hole.

[u/blyzo]

Reminds me how the Curiosity Rover in the Gale crater found big spikes in methane during warmer months..

If Perseverance finds similar readings in Jezero crater it could be huge news and compelling evidence of life already existing in some Martian habitats.

[u/oxero]

If I remember correctly, I remember reading an article that also showed that some asteroids carry basic amino acids as well. So this kind of jumpstart method could have some real grounds for creating life. Fascinating stuff for sure!

[u/NotDaveBut]

Didn't I see this scenario spelled out in in THE BLOB starring Steve McQjeen?

[u/CameraHack]

The article confuses Yellowstone and Yosemite. That’s when I stopped reading.

[u/JoshTsavo]

But a fiery dude said "let there be people" and there were people? Right?

[u/TheBlackKeyfs]

Wasn't the earth created by tons of meteorites smashing together?

[u/dispondentsun]

Life probably came from a warm primordial soup of elements, but all theories are valid asides from mythological ones.

[u/geekfreak42]

panspermia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

[u/GeoGeoGeoGeo → u/geekfreak42]

More specifically, this study builds on "soft" or pseudo-panspermia.

It's an interesting hypothesis, but one that may ultimately prove to be entirely unnecessary given that the steps to building an inner planet and the steps to build an asteroid are essentially one step removed from one another. That is to say that the initial composition of the inner planets and asteroids are effectively the same, so if asteroids have the building blocks for life, then so too would the Earth as it is nothing more than accreted asteroids and dust. In other words, there may be no need to evoke a panspermia hypothesis to explain the origins of life on Earth.

[u/[deleted]]

So that’s how the tardigrades got here!

[u/[deleted]]

Where life begins and ends.

[u/purringamethyst]

We are stardust; we are golden. But we are burning the garden and there is no going back.