Life Producing Vents

Champagne vent
Northwest Eifuku volcano
Mariana Trench

When seawater enters into the ocean crust, heats and reacts with crustal rock, then rises to the seabed, the columns of emerging fluid and gas is called a hydrothermal vent.

Hydrothermal vents dot the Earth's seabeds in volcanically active areas and in zones where tectonic plates are moving apart.

Marine biologists study the unique chemosynthetic biological communities living around vents. Some hypothesize that hydrothermal vents produced the organic molecules needed for life.

A recent study by chemists at University College London reports that the chemical properties found on the surfaces inside hydrothermal vents are similar to enzymes.

Enzymes /ˈɛnzaɪmz/ are macromolecular biological catalysts. Enzymes accelerate, or catalyze, chemical reactions.

Enzymes are biological catalysts that govern chemical reactions in living organisms. Hydrothermal vents would therefore be capable of spontaneously producing carbon-based molecules like methanol and formic acid from the carbon dioxide dissolved in the emerging water.

"There is a lot of speculation that hydrothermal vents could be the location where life on Earth began. There is a lot of CO2 dissolved in the water, which could provide the carbon that the chemistry of living organisms is based on, and there is plenty of energy, because the water is hot and turbulent. What our research proves is that these vents also have the chemical properties that encourage these molecules to recombine into molecules usually associated with living organisms."
― Nora de Leeuw, Principle Investigator, University College London

Invertebrate tubeworms covering a sulfide chimney called Zooarium.

Image: NOAA

REFERENCES

• Bio-inspired CO2 conversion by iron sulfide catalysts under sustainable conditions. A. Roldan, N. Hollingsworth, A. Roffey, H.-U. Islam, J. B. M. Goodall, C. R. A. Catlow, J. A. Darr, W. Bras, G. Sankar, K. B. Holt, G. Hogarth, N. H. de Leeuw., Chem. Commun., 2015; 51 (35)
• Earth-Ocean Interactions, NOAA/PMEL Vents Program.
• Enzyme, Wikipedia.
• Eruptive Discoveries, by Bill Chadwick, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, 29 April 2002.
• Hydrothermal Vent, Wikipedia.
• Hydrothermal Venting, NOAA/PMEL Vents Program.
• Major known deep-sea hydrothermal vent fields.
• Origin of life: Chemistry of seabed's hot vents could explain emergence of life, University College London, ScienceDaily, 27 April 2015.

Terra Firma

Dating of the oldest rocks on Earth sheds light on how the planet cooled to a life-supportable solid crust from a nascent sphere of molten magma. A cathodoluminescence image of a 400-mm zircon crystal found in a remote part of Western Australia known as Jack Hills is dated at 4.4 billion years old.

A zircon crystal estimated to be 4.4 billion years old
John Valley, University of Wisconsin

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits, nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.
― H. L. Mencken

Genesis Rock from the moon.

To date, Jack Hills zircon crystals are the oldest crystals discovered in-situ on the face of the Earth.

The Genesis Rock, collected by Apollo 15 astronauts during their moon landing, has been dated at 4.46 billion years. Although it originated on the Moon, it is one of the oldest known rocks.

Scientists hypothesize that the Earth began orbiting the sun about 4.6 billion years ago. As a molten protoplanet, the Earth needed a cooling period before a rocky crust was formed that was cool enough to support carbon-based organisms. It cooled from its molten state to solid earth. Terra firma is Latin phrase meaning solid earth. Terra translates to earth. Firma translates to solid.

"You're on Earth. There's no cure for that."
— Samuel Beckett

The dating of the Jack Hills crystal suggests that by its 200-millionth birthday, the Earth had a rocky crust.

Chemical hints in the Isua sediments found on the southwestern coast of Greenland suggest life existed as early as 3.8 billion years ago.

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

REFERENCES

• 4.4 Billion-Year-Old Crystal Is Oldest Piece of Earth, Elizabeth Landau, CNN, 25 February 2014.
• 4.4 Billion-Year-Old Crystal Is Oldest Piece of the Earth’s Crust, Allison Eck, PBS, 24 Feb 2014
• At 4.4 Billion Years Old, Oz Crystals Confirmed As World's Oldest, NPR, Nell Greenfieldboyce, 24 February 2014.
• Oldest dated rocks, Wikipedia.
• Terra Firma, Wikipedia.
• The Isua Rocks, Douglas Page, 2000.