Lightning Sparked All Life on Earth: Harvard Study

The scientific community was fascinated by this new theory.

Life on Earth may have originated as a result of chemical reactions triggered by lightning strikes. A new study from Harvard University suggests that.

“The origin of life is one of the great unanswered questions facing chemistry,” said study lead author George M. Whitesides.

Specifically, what remains in question is how life — the nucleic acids that make up DNA, proteins and metabolic products — arose “spontaneously” billions of years ago, the chemical biology professor added.

The new research is based on the hypothesis that water, electrolytes and common gases combined to form the first biomolecules on Earth. Previous theories have suggested that an asteroid might have crashed into our planet and deposited the pieces needed to solve the puzzle of life—but the lightning theory offers a cleaner, more plausible hypothesis. Lightning strikes may also have been the source of carbon and nitrogen gases that allowed biomolecule structures to survive.

To test this, the team conducted an experiment on the fourth state of matter, plasma, to explore how light affected its chemical composition. This was done under the arid conditions of a lifeless prehistoric Earth.

The simulated “cloud-to-ground” lightning strikes produced high-energy sparks capable of converting carbon dioxide and nitrogen “into highly reactive compounds.” Specifically, carbon dioxide could be reduced to carbon monoxide and formic acid, and nitrogen could be converted to nitrate, nitrite, and ammonium ions.

In addition to looking back into the past, this new discovery holds great potential for possible future discoveries of extraterrestrial life.

“Lightning has been observed on Jupiter and Saturn, and plasma and plasma-induced chemistry may exist outside our solar system,” said lead author Haihui Jue Jiang.

“In the future, our setup will be useful in simulating the environmental conditions of different planets, as well as exploring the reaction pathways caused by lightning and its analogues.”

It could also become a driver of natural technology.

“We are also interested in this research from the perspective of energy efficiency and environmental friendliness in chemical production,” Jiang added.

“We are studying plasma as a tool to develop new ways to make chemicals and drive green chemical processes, such as the production of fertilizers used today.”