Rocks and their role in origin of life.

When we talk about life, the foremost question arises in our mind is “Did the chicken came first, or the egg?” Many hypothesis were made to answer this question, but neither a single answer satisfied our curiosity.

Its important to understand the query. So it eventually means – did the life only arised from living matter OR they just originated from an inanimate compound. Till now, to reveal the hidden mystery of universe, rocks have always played an important role.

To start with, it has been predicted that our solar system came into existence approximately 4.5 billion years ago and the life originated at least 3.5 years ago. In the beginning, the temperature of earth was extremely high but as the time passes it dropped down. As a result, subatomic particles were formed such as quarks, electrons, etc. Then they organize into protons and neutrons, followed by hydrogen and helium when the temperature dropped even lower. As the earth cooled down gradually there was formation of new elements. Further, minerals were formed. There are more than 3000 known minerals and the number is still growing.

Secondly, sunlight also played an important role. Urey Miller experiment states that “when a simple mixture of reduced gas is subjected to electric sparks, the organic molecules form abundantly which are essential to biology.” (Miller 1953; Miller and Urey 1959). In his experiment the organic compound formed from inorganic matter were “amino acids”. And it is well known that amino acids are building blocks of protein which is the key component of muscles and other tissues. And thus, a scientist named ferris argues that “life must have begun with the first self replicating genetic material, RNA”. There were numbers of amino acids extracted, mostly they were mirror image left and right handed forms, but for some reasons life uses only about 20 of them, and they are left handed kinds.

Lately, water came into existence, due to which mineral molecules of rocks interacted with each other inside water. (As water plays a vital role as solvent). Water pictured off the clay which is also consider as having the most common minerals. The clay carry a kind of genetic information in their complex sequences, layer orientations, and metal cation substitutions; that it is predicted as the starting point of life’s first genetic system.

I would like to conclude that rocks and minerals have played a pivotal role in the transition from blasted, prebiotic earth to the living world we now inhabit.

An 2016, science documentary says much about the rocks which are consider as the ultimate reason for life. The film focuses on “The life’s rocky start”. If you develop an interest in this and want to learn more than I recommend you to watch this documentary.