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Among the ongoing mysteries in science is the quest to understand how complex life emerged from earth’s basic elements. Of all the elements, the one most directly linked to life on this planet is undoubtedly carbon. “Organisms” – fundamental units of life – are derived from “organic” compounds – which in turn denote the chemistry of carbon (periodic table code C). Geologist Robert Hazen waxes lyrical about carbon’s place in the universe and suggests that the creative orchestra of the World is constantly playing a “Agreement in G.” The role of carbon in the formation of complex molecules is particularly important in the creation of the building blocks of life.
Not surprisingly, when scientists began to think about various plausible scenarios for the evolution of life, the chemistry of carbon was central. One of the founders of modern microbiology, Louis Pasteur, convincingly rejected the notion of spontaneous creation of life from non-life through a “substance” or “soul”. He did it with a simple experiment in 1869, showing that sterile grape juice could never turn into wine on its own. Some injection of living organisms – such as yeast – had to be done to start the fermentation process. However, Pasteur’s fundamental insight still left us asking how yeasts arose from lifeless chemicals. At some level, we are still trying to find that path to the first “living” entity emerging from chemicals.
To understand how geology and chemistry conspired to create life, we’ll need to bring physics to the party! One of the founders of quantum physics Erwin Schrodinger noted in 1944 in his seminal treatise What is life?— all living things share a common physical characteristic—they self-organize into structures from highly distributed chemical building blocks. In the language of physics, the growth of life reduces “entropy” — which is often defined rather simplistically as the level of “disorder” in a system. More precisely, entropy is a measure of the possible arrangements of a system or the distribution of energy or resulting information in a system.
The energy efficiency and strength of organisms is a fascinating field to examine in what Caltech biophysicist Rob Phillips has called “molecular vitalism.” Using nothing more than the traditional blackboard and colored chalks, wowed the audience at the Kavli Institute by calculating on the fly the amount of energy produced per kilogram by a bacterium, a human, and the sun. Amazingly, the sun – a lifeless, giant nuclear fusion reactor – produces about 0.0001 watts per kilogram. a human produces about one watt per kilogram and a bacterium produces approx thousand watts per kilogram. Energy transfer is a key feature of life, and this is not linked to intelligence but to molecular efficiency.
Linking physics to geology suggests that the only way life could have evolved was under environmental conditions that allowed low-entropy states to emerge in an overall framework that would still increase the total entropy of a system. Weather systems such as tornadoes and hurricanes are examples of such emergence of subregions of lower entropy through stochastic processes while the total entropy increases. What conditions mimic such energy gradients, and what elements might facilitate the emergence of lifelike molecules? We now know that the hypothesis of primordial soup and illumination propagated by famous Miller-Urey experiment could only provide proximate conditions to specific organic composition.
Funding for origin-of-life research is sporadic. The Simons Foundation, started by mathematician and hedge fund manager Jim Simon, has has been a major donor of scientific research in this area. based in Philadelphia Templeton Foundation Focuses on ‘Big Questions’ with more philosophical underpinnings looking at theology as well as the rise of forms of artificial intelligence. Independent university networks have also emerged to fuel research and writing on this topic. The Dutch government announced a grant of 40 million euros over the next 10 years “Evolving Life from Non-life” Program (Evolf).
As we consider ways of sustaining life on earth from his point of view planetary boundaries and new technological solutions, We still need to address the very fundamental question of how life emerged as a research priority, particularly in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Research should be approached with humility and scientists should calmly engage in controversy and with those who use the very complexity of life-giving molecules to make scientifically problematic “creationist” arguments. However, these discussions need to be carefully curated so that they generate less heat and more light on some of the most complex existential questions for the public.
