Reading: The origin of life on Earth may have been found

The origin of life on Earth may have been found

Last updated: 2025/10/16 at 1:38 PM

News Room Published 16 October 2025

Earth is the weirdest planet we know because it’s the only one with life on it. But the problem is, no one knows how life first started. There are a lot of theories, from a warm pond to comets into the Earth, and lightning strikes that entered the ocean. Now one new theory suggests that it could come from microlightning (Picture: Getty)

To understand this theory, we need to sidestep into folklore. Blue flames that flicker over bogs and marshes – also known as will-o’-the-wisps – have inspired ghostly folktales for centuries. They are also known as jack-o’-lanterns, corpse candles, and ignis fatuus. Some say they are mischievous spirits and others lanterns being carried by wandering spirits but researchers have long suspected the flames come from a chemical reaction in gases released by decaying organic matter (Picture: Getty)

Methane is an odourless, colourless and highly flammable gas which makes up around two thirds of swamp gas. And when it reacts with oxygen, it glows blue violet. Methane does not spontaneously ignite. But, now researchers think that tiny lightning bursts jumping between microscopic bubbles can cause this to happen (Picture: Getty)

In their paper, which is published in PNAS, the researchers say they used high-speed cameras recording video at 24,000 frames per second which captured flashes of electricity zipping between the surfaces of tiny charged bubbles. Then when oppositely charged bubbles came together, electrons jumped from a negatively charged surface to a positive one and generated a spark. Each of these sparks lasted just a few milliseconds, and the more methane there is in the mix, the more these electric sparks show up (Picture: Getty)

Other researchers have also jumped on this finding. According to Science Advances, Dr Graham Cooks, a chemist at Purdue University, says that chemical reactions triggered by microbubbles ‘is going to turn out to be a much bigger and general phenomenon.’ Using a variation of Dr Zare’s approach, his team has initiated thousands of separate chemical reactions simultaneously with the aim to discover new routes to synthesising compounds. They have found that bubble driven reactions can create bonds between amino acids to make peptides, as well as bonds between nucleic acids to make polynucleotides – both essential building blocks for life (Picture: Getty)

So, how does this hold up to creating all life on Earth? The senior researcher, Dr Richard Zare has previously shown in a different study that charged water droplets measuring between 1 micron and 20 microns in diametre can generate microlightning powerful enough to form organic molecules, which may have produced the building blocks of Earth’s earliest life through crashing waves and waterfalls which threw up mists of water (Picture: Getty)

The researchers say that microdroplets in fine sprays of water generate streaks of ‘microlightning’. When surrounded by the right mix of gases, these sparks power chemical reactions that synthesise many molecules for life. At the time, Dr Zare said: ‘This is a real contribution to understanding how you can go from non-life to life. You have water sprays all over the place, particularly around rocks, and there are crevices in rocks where these chemicals can accumulate’ (Picture: Getty)

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