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Updated March 17th, 2021 at 15:30 IST

Lightning strikes may have helped in formation of living organisms on earth: Study

Lightning strikes may have caused the emergence of life forms on Earth billions of years ago, according to a new study.

Reported by: Apoorva Kaul
Primordial lightning
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Lightning strikes may have caused the emergence of life forms on Earth billions of years ago, according to a new study. The new study was conducted by researchers at Yale University and the University of Leeds has been published in the journal Nature Communications. Researchers said that lightning strikes, a quintillion of them occurring over a billion years may have provided a spark of life on Earth. 

Lightning strikes formed life on Earth

The new study offers information about the origin of life on Earth and other rocky planets. According to Researchers, lightning strikes during the first billion years after the planet's formation roughly 4.5 million years ago may have freed up Phosphorus. Phosphorus is a key ingredient that is necessary for the formation of life but it was not easily accessible on Earth billions of years ago.

Phosphorus is essential to life and plays a key role in all life processes from movement to growth and reproduction. The phosphorous present on early Earth’s surface was contained in minerals that cannot dissolve in water, but schreibersite can. Benjamin Hess, lead author of the study said that this research would help in understanding how life formed on earth. Phosphorus minerals arising from lightning strikes eventually exceeded the amount from meteorites by about 3.5 billion years ago, roughly the age of the earliest-known fossils widely accepted to be those of microbes, they found. 

Dr Jason Harvey, Associate Professor of Geochemistry who mentored Benjamin Hess in the study said that early bombardment was once in a solar system event. He said after planets reached their mass, the delivery of phosphorus from meteorites becomes negligible. He said that if atmospheric conditions are favourable for the generation of lightning, elements essential to the formation of life delivered to the surface of a planet. Harvey said, 

“Lightning, on the other hand, is not such a one-off event. If atmospheric conditions are favourable for the generation of lightning, elements essential to the formation of life can be delivered to the surface of a planet."

Professor Sandra Piazolo, Professor of Structural Geology and Tectonics who mentored Benjamin Hess in the study said the research opens the door to several future avenues of investigation, including search for and analysis of fresh fulgurite in Early Earth-like environment. The researchers estimated that phosphorus minerals made by lightning strikes surpassed those from meteorites when the earth was around 3.5 billion years old, which is about the age of the earliest known microfossils, making lightning strikes significant in the emergence of life on the planet. Hess said that lightning must have created the pathway towards the formation of life. 

“It makes lightning strikes a significant pathway toward the origin of life” 

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Published March 17th, 2021 at 15:30 IST

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