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Firstly elements like iron, silicon, magnesium, aluminium and oxygen froze out into small dust-size
grains which, due to gravity, would begin to collide together and form chunks, then boulders, and
eventually planetismals – objects large enough to exert their own gravity.
These began to then collide with each other and as their mass increased, so did the energy involved.
Once their size reached ~100km the collisions began to cause melting and vaporisation, allowing the
iron and rocks to arrange themselves. The denser iron settled in the centre with the lighter rock on
top, forming layers similar to the core and mantle of the modern Earth and other inner planets.
As the sun ignited (entering the T-Tauri phase) it blew away the majority of gases from the proto-
planetary disc. This allowed the solid objects to collect into a handful of larger, stable bodies in well-
spaced orbits. Earth was the third (counting outwards from the Sun) of these objects. It is believed
that the moon was formed around this time as a large planetismal, having collided with Earth, led to
the ejection of a large amount of the Earths mantle. Most of this was recaptured, the rest however
gathered and formed a stable orbit, the birth of the moon.
It is important to note that the very early Earth had no atmosphere able to filter UV-radiation, at this
stage life would be an impossibility.
The water vapour, when photolysed, could also have allowed the formation of the Earth’s first small
amounts of o-zone. This is vital when considering the creation of life, as o-zone acts as the filter to
prevent harmful UV radiations from harming organisms on the surface of the Earth.
In the atmosphere
+ the elements required for life can all be found in the skies
- closer to UV radiation and less protected
[again micelle structures could provide mobile reaction chambers, the oily layer on top of
the ocean forming bubbles lifted away by the wind]
+ in 1953 Miller and Urey showed that, using an artificial atmosphere similar to the
primordial atmosphere, lightening could provoke reactions between inorganic molecules to
form monomers
Wächtershäuser’s hypothesis
+ presents a consistent system of tracing today’s biochemistry back to ancestral reactions
+ does not depend on an energy source outside of the reaction, instead the sulphides of iron
and other minerals provide the energy to not only form monomers but also for
polymerisation and the formation of oligomers.
+ this system is auto-catalytic
The radioactive beach theory
+ claims that stronger tidal processes from a much closer moon could have concentrated
grains of uranium at the high-tide mark on primordial beaches
+ these grains could maintain natural nuclear reactions (such as in Gabon), providing
sufficient energy to form organic molecules such as amino acids and sugars from acetonitrile
found in the water. Monazite would release soluble phosphate into the regions between
sand-grains making it ‘biologically accessible’
+could also form part of the organo-metallic substances which would catalyse further
reactions
In the cosmos
+ the biggest advantage to this theory is that it can explain why Earth is homochiral (all L-
amino acids and R-nucleic acid sugars) in the absence of a chiral source or catalyst
+ polarised light has been shown to destroy one enantiomer within the protoplanetary disk
Homochirality could also be explained by the β-decay of D-leucine in a racemic mixture and the
presence of 14C in larger amounts in early organic chemicals.
+RNA is known to form efficient catalysts and can, itself, act as an enzyme
+RNA can self-replicate
+RNA can catalyse the formation of peptide bonds
+RNA, as shown by its similarities, can withhold genetic information
- there are no known chemical pathways for the abiogenetic synthesis of nucleotides from
pyrimidine nucleobases cytosine and uracil under prebiotic conditions. It could be that they
contained different nucleobases.
Ribosomes
Ribonucleotide reductase
The phylogenetic tree is another method of displaying diversification which suggests 3 branches
separating from the earliest life-forms, supporting the concept of diversification and evolution.