The lightning could have provided enough bioavailable phosphorus to help generate life on Earth, according to a study published Tuesday that indicates the existence of a source of previously underestimated essential nutrients on the planet.
The emergence of life on Earth depended on a precise cocktail of critical ingredients, one of which is bioavailable or reactive phosphorus, orn key component of DNA, RNA and lipids in the cell membrane.
The aforementioned study, conducted by a team at Yale University (USA) and published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications, reveals that At the beginning of the Earth’s formation, reactive phosphorus was enclosed in insoluble minerals.
Research suggests that an exception to this was the mineral known as schreibersite, which is highly reactive and would produce phosphorus capable of forming organic molecules.
However, the predominant source of schreibersite is meteorites and it was believed, according to the publication, that the appearance of life was related to lightning from extraterrestrial rocks.
The expert and author of the study, Bejamin Hess, of the American university mentioned above, and a group of colleagues proposed an alternative source of schreibersite and phosphorus that it contains.
According to this, using spectroscopic techniques, schreibersite was found in glassy minerals that had formed by lightning in certain clay-rich soils.
Estimating the amount of schreibersite that each bolt of lightning could have produced and the appropriate terrestrial surface at the beginning of planet Earth, Experts calculated that the rays could have been between 110 and 11,000 kilograms of phosphorus per year.
It is a wide and sufficient range to potentially feed the first human forms. It is also an amount that would eventually exceed meteor hits, according to this study.
Using models to simulate the Earth’s early-phase climate, experts have predicted that although meteorite strikes began to decline after the Moon formed 4.5 billion years ago, the number of lightning and phosphorus provided exceeded meteorites by 3.5. billion years, coincides with the origin of life.