Solar activity may be a contributing factor to the emergence of life on Earth. In this respect informs NASA.
To find out how life began on Earth, scientists are trying to find an explanation for how amino acids, the “building material” of proteins and all cellular organisms, came to be. In the middle of the 20th century, a series of laboratory experiments with “primordial soup” were conducted on the ancient Earth – scientists, to the knowledge of their time, modeled the ancient ocean, atmosphere and lightning discharges. Since then, scientists have learned that there is much less ammonia (NH3) and methane (CH4) in the atmosphere than previously thought. Instead, Earth’s air was filled with carbon dioxide (CO2) and molecular nitrogen (N2), which required more energy to break down. These gases can still produce amino acids, but in much smaller amounts.
Now Vladimir Hayrapetyan and his colleagues have conducted experiments proving that the activity of the Sun can provide energy for chemical reactions necessary for life. The authors created a mixture of gases that corresponded to early Earth’s atmosphere. They mixed carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen, and water, and added varying amounts of methane to the mixture (the proportion of methane in Earth’s early atmosphere is unknown, but thought to be low). They “ignited” gas mixtures with protons that mimicked solar wind particles, or “ignited” with spark discharges to simulate lightning.
When a mixture with a methane content of over 0.5% was irradiated with a stream of protons, amino acids and carboxylic acids appeared to form in the tank. At the same time, to obtain similar amino acids under the influence of spark discharges, the methane content must be increased to 15%, which is considered an extremely high value.
The authors conclude that an active young Sun may well have contributed to the chemical reactions necessary for the origin of life.
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