Life Archives

June 10, 2021March 9, 2022 by Evan Gough

Did Asteroid Impacts Provide Both the Heat and Raw Ingredients to Enable Life?

An artist's conception of an asteroid collision, which leads to how "families" of these space rocks are made in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech — An artist's conception of an asteroid collision, in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This is our Great Question: How did life begin on Earth? Anyone who says they have the answer is telling tall tales. We just don’t know yet.

While a definitive answer may be a long way off—or may never be found—there are some clever ways to nibble at the edges of that Great Question. A group of researchers at Kobe University in Japan are taking their own bites out of that compelling question with a question of their own: Did the heat from asteroid impacts help life get started?

March 18, 2021March 18, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

Lightning Strikes Helped Life get an Early Start on Earth

So, you want to create life? You’re going to need some ingredients first. On Earth four billion years ago, you might find some of those ingredients in the impact craters of asteroid strikes (as long as you don’t get blown up in the blast yourself). A safer place to look, according to new research from the University of Leeds, might be in the sites of lightning strikes. Lightning is less destructive, more common, and creates equally useful minerals out of which you can build your early, single cellular life forms.

February 23, 2021February 23, 2021 by Evan Gough

Since Perseverance is Searching for Life, What Will it Be Looking for?

The rocks seen here along the shoreline of Lake Salda in Turkey were formed over time by microbes that trap minerals and sediments in the water. These so-called microbialites were once a major form of life on Earth and provide some of the oldest known fossilized records of life on our planet. NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance mission will search for signs of ancient life on the Martian surface. Studying these microbial fossils on Earth has helped scientists prepare for the mission. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

You have to be careful what you say to people. When NASA or someone else says that the Perseverance rover will be looking for fossil evidence of ancient life, the uninformed may guffaw loudly. Or worse, they may think that scientists are looking for actual animal skeletons or something.

Of course, that’s not the case.

So what is Perseverance looking for?

January 5, 2021January 5, 2021 by Evan Gough

The Interior of Enceladus Looks Really Great for Supporting Life

Scientists recently determined that a certain strain of Earth bacteria could thrive under conditions found on Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

When NASA’s Voyager spacecraft visited Saturn’s moon Enceladus, they found a body with young, reflective, icy surface features. Some parts of the surface were older and marked with craters, but the rest had clearly been resurfaced. It was clear evidence that Enceladus was geologically active. The moon is also close to Saturn’s E-ring, and scientists think Enceladus might be the source of the material in that ring, further indicating geological activity.

Since then, we’ve learned a lot more about the frigid moon. It almost certainly has a warm and salty subsurface ocean below its icy exterior, making it a prime target in the search for life. The Cassini spacecraft detected molecular hydrogen—a potential food source for microbes—in plumes coming from Enceladus’ subsurface ocean, and that energized the conversation around the moon’s potential to host life.

Now a new paper uses modelling to understand Enceladus’ chemistry better. The team of researchers behind it says that the subsurface ocean may contain a variety of chemicals that could support a diverse community of microbes.