![]() But do we know what life fundamentally is? However life first started, today we know Earth is teeming with it. Unexplainable ’s Byrd Pinkerton explores in this episode:ģ) What is life anyway? Sean Gallup/Getty Images So what’s standing in the way? And what would it mean if scientists actually succeed and create life in a bottle? They could uncover not just the story of the origin of life on Earth, but come to a shocking conclusion about how common life must be in the universe. But getting all these components of life to form in a lab and assemble into a simple cell - that hasn’t happened. And they’ve gotten RNA molecules to form, which are like simplified DNA. Since then, scientists have been able to make lipid blobs that looked a lot like cell membranes. one of life’s most basic building blocks - by mixing together some gasses believed to have filled the atmosphere billions of years ago, with heat and simulated lightning. In the 1950s, scientists Harold Urey and Stanley Miller showed that it’s possible to synthesize the amino acid glycine - i.e. This line of research has demonstrated some stunning successes. From there, they could piece together a story about how life started on Earth. The thinking is, perhaps if they can mimic the conditions of the early Earth, they will eventually be able to create something similar to the first simple cells that formed here billions of years ago. But scientists have good reason to suspect it did.įor decades, scientists have been trying to recreate in labs the conditions of that early water-filled Earth. It’s possible that life didn’t start on Earth at all. Once there was water, somehow there was life. So how did the first one form? DeAgostini/Getty Images Here’s what she’s learned so far:Ģ) How did life start in that water? Even single-celled organism can be incredibly intricate. Hallis has been traveling the world to investigate and try to find some samples of the very oldest water on Earth. Was it delivered by comets crashing into our world? Or more fantastically, do we only have water due to the extremely circumstantial event of planets like Jupiter wandering toward the sun from the outer solar system? Or was it, somehow, deeply buried within the early Earth? Scientists can think of a few plausible options. “So how do you get so much liquid condensing onto the surface of a planet that should be really, really hot?” Lydia Hallis, a planetary scientist at the University of Glasgow, tells Unexplainable’s Noam Hassenfeld. Any water that was around at the beginning would have boiled away. When the Earth was forming, it was extremely hot. So it’s curious that scientists don’t fully understand how water came to cover two-thirds of the surface of our world and create the very first condition necessary for life. Different forms of life can survive on extremely different food sources, but nothing lives without water. The quest to understand why there is life on Earth must start with water because water is the one thing on Earth all life needs. 1) Where did Earth’s water come from? Alexander Gerst/ESA via Getty Images We don’t have all the pieces of the story, but what we do know tells an origin story of epic scope that takes us on an adventure to the primordial days of our world. To search for the origins of life on Earth is to ask other big questions: How rare is it for life to form on any planet? How improbable is it for life to form on any planet, anywhere? The quest of discovering the “how” of life on Earth is bigger than just filling in the missing chapters of the history book of our world. That’s the subject of Origins, a three-episode series from Unexplainable - Vox’s podcast that explores big mysteries, unanswered questions, and all the things we learn by diving into the unknown. Despite our age of environmental destruction, there’s life in every corner of the globe, under its water, nestled in the most extreme environments we can imagine.īut why? How did life start on Earth? What was the series of events that led to birds, bugs, amoebas, you, and me? ![]() For all we know, Earth is the only planet with life on it. ![]() The defining feature of our world is life.
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