The Fly in the Primordial Soup - Issue 37: Currents
▻http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/the-fly-in-the-primordial-soup
I arrived on the second day of creation. Laurie Barge had invited me to spend the day in her lab, modeling the origin of life. She is a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and, with her lab chief, the pioneering geologist Michael J. Russell, a member of the National Astrobiology Institute. My task was to make a miniature hydrothermal vent under conditions that simulated the primeval ocean, 4 billion years ago. Such vents are at the heart of a scientific creation story so counterintuitive it could hardly be true, yet so logical that in broad strokes it almost must be. On the first day, Barge and her students had created the oceans. They started with distilled water and bubbled nitrogen through it to displace oxygen gas, which had not been present on the (...)