Solar eruptions may have sparked life on Earth, new study reveals

Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

A new study suggests that the first building blocks of life on Earth may have been formed by eruptions from the Sun. The research team found that high-energy particles from our Sun aided in creating organic molecules in Earth's atmosphere that allowed it to warm up enough to incubate life.

The study is based on a series of chemical experiments that demonstrate how energetic solar particles, upon colliding with gases present in the early atmosphere of our planet, can create amino acids and carboxylic acids - the essential building blocks of proteins and organic life.

In 2016, Vladimir Airapetian, a stellar astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-author of the new paper, published a study suggesting that during Earth's first 100 million years, the Sun was about 30% dimmer. However, superflares - enormous explosions so rare today that we only experience them once every 100 years or so - would have erupted once every 3-10 days - launching near-light speed particles that would regularly collide with Earth's atmosphere, kickstarting chemical reactions.

Airapetian, Dr. Kobayashi, a professor of chemistry at the Yokohama National University in Japan, and their collaborators conducted experiments to replicate the conditions of early Earth's atmosphere, using a mixture of gases including carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen, water, and a variable amount of methane. They then shot the gas mixtures with protons (simulating solar particles) or ignited them with spark discharges (simulating lightning).

They found that mixtures containing a methane proportion of at least 0.5% produced detectable amounts of amino acids and carboxylic acids when shot by protons. However, spark discharges required a methane concentration of approximately 15% before any amino acids were formed.

The researchers concluded that solar particles appear to be a more efficient energy source than lightning, suggesting that the young Sun might have played a more significant role in kickstarting the precursors of life more easily and that this process may have occurred earlier than scientists had previously assumed.

How did life begin on Earth? 🤔 One theory says the building blocks of life formed after a "primordial soup" of chemicals was jolted by lightning. ⚡ New research suggests that solar eruptions, not lightning, may have given that jolt. More: https://t.co/oHBK8TJgCS pic.twitter.com/045LZAW5O0

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) May 2, 2023