Origin of Life - How Life Started on Earth

 They are sparkling, priceless ... In time, she was glowing. How can a person not fall in love with rocks and minerals? I mean color, shape ... They are the cornerstones of modern civilizations. We wouldn't have the TV, we wouldn't have the vehicles, we wouldn't have Buildings without the rich minerals we have now. But are the rocks and minerals dissolved? The mystery of the great mystery of evolution? the origin of life? The rocks that we collect, tell us a fact That life would not have existed without God and then the rocks. Can cold, lifeless rocks solve the mystery? For every living thing on Earth? From Australia to Morocco. Nova (the name of the documentary film company) turned the world back in time. To analyze the origin and emergence of life. Once you see a rock, you will think that there is nothing in it. But this carries with it the foundation of life. From the first spark ... People say they made "Frankenstein" in a test tube ... To survival of the fittest (Darwin's theory). These were enormous creatures.

Sharks were probably 15 to 20 meters in size. Was this the secret linking rocks and life? Who made the difference? The rocky start of life. Now on Nova Marrakesh old market, Chaotic and colorful gathering place teeming with life for thousands of years, The perfect place to ask how so beautiful and sometimes strange thing That thing called life, how did it start? How the earth turned from broken rock For a living planet? Filled with diverse and amazing creatures. It is a question that has long confused scientists. Now, Robert Heisen, the geologist is trying to dig for the missing To be able to describe life.

Look at that vein of calcite ... Rocks. Nothing seems more life than a rock. It's abiotic, the antithesis of a living thing, but we got started We realize that rocks certainly played a fundamental role at the origin of life. It is Hazen who exposes the mystery of the relationship between rocks and that life Help propel both the origin of life and its evolution into complex creatures. This is a new set of understandings and the more we look, the more we see That life depends on rocks, rocks depend on life. This is what happens for four billion years. As a geologist, it is not surprising Hazen is looking for answers written in stone. But is he right? Are rocks the lost spark of life? Earth's long history is unimaginable.

If it is speeded up to the equivalent of one day, all humans are from The first skeletons to invent the iPhone have just occurred The last four seconds. Dinosaurs were still wandering around the Earth 20 minutes before that, But the creation of our planet happened more than 23 hours ago, two cycles on This hour Or 4.5 billion years. Understanding the history of the vast land is a difficult task. It's four and a half billion change, but you can divide it into half a dozen roads Describes the Earth through time. Bob Hazen has come up with another way to visualize Earth's long history It reveals this special relationship between rocks and life. Divide it into six phases, each represented by a different color To understand how it ended up with the green land that we know now, requires us To turn back the clock to there before that was no life at all.

The first stage was the creation of black land. Back in Morocco, Hazen and Adam Aronson, a meteorite expert, look for a little rock From the beginning of the universe. - Look at this pile here. -Yes. These are meteors. Rocks that fell from space. This is Tama. This is the one that fell 20 kilometers down the road from here. People saw it fall. And it was the last meteor fall in Siberia captured in videos that appeared on Youtube. Other space rocks have expired for sale here in Morocco. - Could you buy this without taking tests ... I will drop the cash now here and give me a good price. Meteorites here can sell For tens of thousands of dollars.

That might sound like a steep price to get a block from Rock, but these are some of the oldest things in our solar system. This is the oldest object you can do holding in your hand. It is 4.6 billion years Old and formed before the Earth was formed. This is the first solid The first rock in our solar system and these came together to build all the planets. Our Earth was created from rocks and dust present at the beginning of our solar system. Over time, small parts of the orbit collided with the rock, coming together in A planet orbiting the sun. In the beginning, the Earth was molten temperatures in the thousands of degrees, But in the cold void of this hot space the rocks began to cool and change.

nothing. No remnants of dust are believed to have survived the Black Earth period. It was an unpleasant period in a hellish way. Volcanoes spoil hot lava from deep within this planet. When it cools, it covers the ground with the first rock called basalt It was black. It looks like a desolate sight, but some of the ingredients life will ever need Already here in these rocks. Look inside and begin to understand how intriguing Even an ordinary rock. Every rock, you can unlock it I looked inside, something special. The rocks are mostly made up of Minerals, which are crystals such as quartz or diamond. Looking through a microscope In thin strips of rock allow you to see its mineral composition. This is a peridotian rock, made up of tiny crystals, including olivine and pyroxene. Even just a black basalt rock, washed away from the volcano, became A mixture of colored minerals. It's kind of like muffin fruit, you know an open slice, and there are nuts and there Dried fruits and maybe some lemon peel.

It's made from a lot of small things and not even a slice in that fruitcake You see everything inside that makes it special. What makes it special is not just their beauty. Minerals have remarkable Chemical and physical properties and is the source of many elements - Nature's building blocks. This is why it is essential for our modern world to make everything out of The skyscrapers are taller - Cell phones are smaller. Extracting the element molybdenum from the mineral molybdenite to make steel stronger. Or add a pinch of cobalt and your iPhone's battery will last longer.

Minerals are the primary building block of societies. We didn't have it TV, we wouldn't have cars, we wouldn't have buildings without Our mineral fortunes. So, the mineral's remarkable chemical properties were also the key Create life? If so, then Earth would mean more than that it started with It is estimated that the meteorites that formed Earth only had about 250 minerals, A type of chemical starting group, containing many elements. Then, in the intense heat and pressures of our planet, a new creation Minerals began to form.

This changes the appearance of the earth from black to the colour grey. Yosemite National Park is a relatively new piece of land. But the kind of rock that makes up these dramatic cliffs goes back much further than that. These massive walls contain granite minerals like quartz and feldspar. Granite became the basis for our continents, leading the Earth into a gray period. At this point, the land is still far from the glorious diversity of flora And the animals that make Yosemite so picturesque. But the stage is set for the next character in the story of our planet: Water, which will turn the earth blue. Water plays a central role in every model's the origin of life. That's because water is a great solvent. All of these are different types of Molecules can float all over the water then they have the ability to They interact together. The starting point is water. So when the earth has cooled with enough liquid water, Is this element the key to life? One of the biggest unknowns in this whole idea of ​​going from black to gray To Earth covered in blue water, is how quickly it happened.

Timing is a big mystery. Pilbara in Western Australia is one of the oldest places on Earth Thus, one of the best places to solve the planet's first ocean riddle. Hazen joins a team of geologist stars, including Martin Van Krandink From the University of New South Wales and John Valley from the university From Wisconsin. Valle collects rocks that could hold clues when water first appeared. We can get zircon and other minerals that go back all the way to 4.4 billion years. Hopefully. Some of the rocks here contain the size of the grainy sand that was bothered by the ancient rocks. One in a million, literally, is a crystal called zircon, one of the longest lasting Materials in nature. Zircon is a popular gemstone, but microscopic zirconium is found here More precious.

Zircon crystals are especially amazing. Peridot is a valuable gem of course, however These small values ​​that geologists consider to be microscopic make the loop inferior, however They tell an incredible story. To tell this story, John Valley must first find tiny crystals, The final needle is in a haystack. If you want to find a needle in a haystack, the first thing to do is you Burn the haystack Then she sips the ash to find the needle. The rocks are smashed into Sand sized granules and sorted in a device developed to prepare it for gold. Valley-seeking gold heavy zircon crystals that you get Head to different itineraries. Then, grain by grain, with a very firm hand, Thousands of tiny crystals are sorted and analyzed. The chemical structure of zircon crystals bears evidence of both the environment And the age when it was formed. Some of these little crystals go very far back, After more than a hundred million years the Earth formed.

It is the oldest piece of land ever discovered. So they can illuminate what our young planet looks like. It is absolutely amazing. To hold this grain of sand in the palm of your hand It is literally to see back through time. It is a time machine. Valley expects this time crystal machines confirm a long decade See that the Earth was covered in molten lava, still cooling Violent formation.

I think the zircon on the left looks very promising. What he discovered was shocking because this type of zircon created 4.3 A billion years ago it could only have been in the presence of liquid water. But how could there be water if the earth was still hot and hell? The implication was that early on the Earth had water, It was cooler and wetter. It's starting to look much more familiar. If water is an essential starting point for life Could there be life too early? The science of zircon tells us that the Earth has been for a very, very long time It was a habitable environment, not necessarily life. We don't know it, but there's no reason why life doesn't exist As early as 4.3 billion years ago.

So, if life is possible early on, the question arises: How did life begin? In 1871, Charles Darwin in a letter to a friend speculated that a little was warm The blessing may be the birthplace of life. A warm chemical soup swimming in the energy from the sun was, well, Convenient for particles coming together in new ways and creating life. Darwin was way ahead of his time. You will get a nice warm soup a little way long.

Jeff Boda of the Scripps Institute has spent oceanography in San Diego Career work to understand early ground soup of chemicals. It began under the supervision of perhaps the most famous scientist originally Life research, Stanley Miller. There is in the history of science a turning point where we suddenly see Earth history and life differently. In the early nineties of the fifties, Stanley Miller, eager graduate student, and Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner A mentor at the University of Chicago had this amazing experiment Where early Earth they made an environment. It looks like this sort of Frankenstein, but in reality It is a carefully thought out design. Buda puts a recent test of the An experiment of nineteen fifties on Miller's original laboratory equipment.

One bottle contains water. This is for simulating the ocean. The other flask got gases so this is the atmosphere. Just as in nature, the water from the ocean evaporates and rises in Atmosphere, as it condenses and returns to the ocean. Miller simulated what he believed to have been the early Earth's atmosphere with Various gases such as ammonia and methane. Then he added a spark of genius. Miller and Urey decide to use a spark to simulate lightning, because that's why This is a ubiquitous process in Earth's atmosphere. That was the real inspiration. These little electrical sparks acted like Lightning simulator. Energy from a spark from lightning breaks down the gas And water molecules so that they can undergo more chemical reactions. To their surprise, when they turn this device on, just two days later, She started to see this pink developing. In a few days, black oily goo is forming around the electrodes. The electrodes get covered with new materials.

Organic compounds, usually associated with life. And it wasn't just any organic compound. They were the amino acids that make proteins, Ingredients for life. Amino acids are the building blocks of life. It forms proteins, which are the key made up of muscles and other tissues. People thought "Aha!" This is a major step in the origin of life. And you really think you can bring the dead to life? That body did not die, and it never lived. I created it. The experiment sparked a fear that Frankenstein would create, like in this A classic movie, it was just around the corner. People were saying they did this Frankenstein in a test tube. Miller and Urey were cooking life in a test tube? Many of the headlines were saying "Life Created in the Laboratory", "Life created in a test tube." Of course, this was a mistake.

The real news was, it was made by vehicles that are part of life. By creating amino acids, the Miller-Urey experiment appears to confirm that Darwin was right. Life must have started in a shallow pool. But 24 years later, it was a shock The challenge of discovering the radical idea. At the bottom of the dark ocean, more than a mile below the surface, Explorers found hot and mineral-rich hydrothermal vents, such as underwater Volcanoes. Temperatures have reached over 600 degrees and so far here, Life was booming. Not from the sun's energy, but through chemical energy from the vents.

Nobody realized that life could thrive without sunlight. Here you have this extreme temperature and extreme pressure and you have to switch Perceptions and realizing it just because it doesn't mean it to us It is extreme to those microbes. Instead of a warm shallow pond, Can this unlikely and dark environment how life began? To answer this, Hazen decided to try to create life building blocks in circumstances Deep sea vent. My first thought was "Why not do this try Miller-Urey but do it." At high temperature, high pressure? Hazen's lab is at Carnegie Science Foundation, famous for simulating experiments Intense pressure deep inside the ground with powerful tools called pressure bombs. They are firing bombs for a reason, because things can explode. Hazen and colleagues adapted these pressure bombs to model the environment From the deep sea holes in a small gold wind instrument. What they discovered came as a surprise.

Nothing happened. You can take basic gases. Nitrogen, CO2, maybe some sulfur compounds, You can mix it up, you can put it into a golden tube, you can heat it up, you don't get much this is interesting. Simply pressure and heating components have little effect. Hazen was missing the spark, as in the Miller Urey experiment. The thing that starts with chemistry. He said, What is going on? What is different? Well look at the natural environment. There are all these rocks and minerals. Let's try to put some rocks and minerals in. They recreate an early earth cocktail but this time grind into a powder of rocks and minerals.

But does the sad rock for Hazin do the trick? They run the experience again. This time, the atoms are working to repair into new organic molecules, including amino acids. Once you put the rock powder and minerals in the capsules, the gold then everything Really amazing things started to happen. It made organic molecules, became more stable, lasted longer, and that He really pointed us in the direction of "aha", that should be part of the story. While scientists are still debating whether life began in shallow puddles or deep vents, Both sides wonder what part of the story Did rocks and minerals play? One potential answer in London can be found in the robust properties of clay. Most people will be familiar with the article. It's too loud. This is a British word that denotes something Soft and generally unpleasant. Peter Coveney of University College, London is busy Gameplay in the slime is a highly developed level. A computer has invented powerful simulations that can track accuracy Movement of up to 10 million atoms. Clay can contain clay, which is made up of some of the most common minerals in the earth.

What makes it so dark, perhaps necessary at the origin of life, can be seen Deep in her atomic makeup. You can see here the basic structure of any play Composed of a large number of cards piled up like a bunch of cards. Clay sheets have spaces between them with water and other particles. These surface areas can help create more complex particles. Potentially even RNA, which is an essential part of life's genetic code One of the most challenging questions in the origin of life is how do we get from The simple building blocks of the complex structures we know Essential for living systems.

To provide a clear mechanism for achieving this. This simulation shows that the clay secret lies in their surfaces. The surfaces of these minerals are incredible. They do all kinds of chemical tricks. Hazen says minerals are like clays clarifying a wonderful aspect of Chemistry, because the surface has reactions that take place can be important As the same components. The most wonderful chemistry occurs on surfaces Your body, your cells are almost the same as the surfaces that conduct chemistry So when we think about the origin of life, minerals are where we place surfaces You have it in your body doing that chemical action.

We are finally starting to understand the secret role minerals can be Played at the origin of life. They provided some ingredients. And surfaces, where important chemical Reactions occur. So, when did the Haze color stages all this happen? One of the best places to find out is back in Australia where Hazen is A team is now looking for first signs of life on Earth. I cannot believe that these rocks are three and a half billion years old. They might Form last week. Martin Van Kranendonk leads the team for extremely unusual rock formation. You dye your eyes you see them all wrinkled, coated, black then if You look a little back, you see a very large structure. There is no clear way that a chemical or practical physical substance would constitute this. exactly. These strange shapes are fossilized remains of life, called stromatolites, Beautifully preserved in these ancient rocks.

This is an amazing place. We're actually looking below the surface of ancient Earth here. This sea floor was 3.4 billion years ago. I can see it in action, it is like snap frozen in a moment in time. But billions of years have affected the most. To really understand stromatolites, we have to go nearly 800 miles. David Flannery, a geologist, has come to Shark Bay in search of them very much Distant offspring. Just under the surface - outward appearance, He finds a series of round black mounts - living stromatolites. Modern environments are like this They are very rare, but they really are the key to explaining what we see in A very early fossil record. Without environments like this, we don't know how the stratolites are built. Stromatolites are something like hard mineral corals The structure that was built, layer by layer. A closer look reveals the builders: Microbes - unicellular life. The living part of stromatolite is only the surface. With the live microbial mat building the skeleton layer by layer, Less than a millimeter per year. The top layer of these stromatolites is alive with microbes that do a wonderful trick.

They capture minerals and sand in water and biologically Cement them, layer by layer, inside solid mounds. The results can be seen in Shark Bay today and in ancient fossils. Let me give you this bump. It is just amazing To be able to see this. This is a unique bump. Van Kranendonk has dated this stromatolite to 3.5 One billion years ago This is the oldest fossil of life on Earth. We all want to know where we have come from, where life originated, how long ago in What the shape of this is the oldest direct evidence we have for life on Earth. But while stromatolites are the earliest fossils of life we ​​found it not Make them the first living thing. In fact, Van Kranendonk thought so before The time stromatolite appeared, the party of life was already in full swing.

There are entire societies and colonies that are building fanciful complex structures. So, we actually came very late to the game, there is a lot that went We have to reach this stage. And it's this complexity that tells us that life It probably originated on Earth very early on. So if these very early fossils were also complicated to be the oldest form of life, Is it possible to find something earlier? This is what Ruth Blake, geologist at Yale University is trying to figure out. By switching to the geological equivalent, investigating a crime scene. The crime has been committed, the criminals are gone, but they are left behind Some indications, as their environment changed. Blake analyzes some of the oldest rocks on Earth, like this one arrives one From Greenland that formed at the bottom of the ocean It is looking for the chemical signature of life, left by microbes, including bacteria. What we're starting with is our surroundings, trapped in the rock, and our file signature is Somewhere here. We must get it out In the lab, Blake and her team melt These rocks and extract particles are so are the chemical signature left behind By ancient microbes.

Ancient life, such as these microbes, consume nutrients to produce energy. The chemical remnants bear the imprint of life. Even today, we humans leave behind chemical traces. When we breathe in, for example, we take in oxygen and exhale out carbon dioxide and water vapor Water vapor interacts with an environment. Amazingly, rocks from 3.5 billion years ago, at the time of stromatolites in Australia, It also carries a strong chemical imprint of life. But when Blake Greenland analyzed rocks from 300 million years earlier, It makes a baffling discovery. Roughly 3.5 billion years ago, we see a strong biological signature The ancient rocks approach it, but not quite there, But we think we're seeing something there.

Blake thinks she discovered fainting as a sign of life 3.8 billion years ago. Only after 700 million years Earth was created, Early in the blue phase. There is still a lot we don't know about our first planet But some things are becoming clearer. If you can move yourself again in time, For about 4 billion years, parts of our Earth may not look very different from this Southern California Beach minus surfers and Google. You can stand on cliffs, most likely granite, overlooking the ever-rich oceans Minerals and early microbial life.

But you will die quickly in a great deal of pain, Asphyxiating in the extreme atmosphere, rich in nitrogen and carbon dioxide, however It lacks free oxygen given to life. Then, something really amazing happened. Those harmless microbes appear to be floating in the water or on stromatolites, I began to change everything, the earth turned red. Wow my God that's amazing! There aren't many places on Earth that you could see something like this. The remains of red earth in Australia can be seen in the Hammersley Basin in Karijini National Park. In these rocks, Hazen finds a surprising result of an early life It began to flourish and develop.

What we see here is one of the greatest gimmicks that life has ever featured. And that's how you take sunlight and convert it into energy. Eventually, microbes, such as those in the stratolites in Shark Bay, began to live outside the sun's energy Through photosynthesis. This resulted in a dramatic spike in gas that Earth was not accustomed to Oxygen. While for us, oxygen is the gift of life, the benign gas, of a world that is not accustomed to it, The oxygen created a dangerous corrosive cocktail. The early oceans were filled with dissolved iron. The new oxygen reacted with this iron and began to do so Rust and sank to the bottom of the sea. These little microbes are microscopic things that you will not think They can do all this a lot, but once they produce that oxygen, the oxygen It interacts with iron in the ocean.

You obtain the largest deposits of iron in the world, Thousands of feet, covering hundreds of square miles. These formations cover a large area with trillions of tons of iron ore. This is the unimaginable result of the trillions on the trillions of microbes breathing. It is a fundamental change in Earth's chemistry. It is the result of ascending oxygen. The rise in oxygen that caused the iron to rust and sent the Earth into the red phase has created many new minerals As a mineralogist, when I look at Earth's history, I see major transformations. I see the effect of moon formation, I see ocean formation, etc. Then nothing, Nothing matches what life and oxygen have done to create new minerals. Some estimate that meteorites began to form Earth with only about 250 minerals. Today, There are over 5000. Hazen thinks that two-thirds of all are the minerals that make up our planet right now. They were created by the introduction of oxygen and most of that was in turn I created from life. It's mind boggling. Rocks create life, life creates rocks, they are intertwined Ways now only come focus.

But the road ahead for life and family rocks will not be easy As we head to the next stage of Earth, new continents form and break apart Which may have brought about dramatic developments in the climate. The earth fell into an icy freeze, which made it white. In these frigid conditions, life almost served. Fortunately, active volcanoes still poke through the ice crust, sublimated Carbon dioxide, or carbon dioxide. Like a thermal blanket around the floor, this kept heat in and saved lives. All life only turns off then the CO2 goes up and goes up and the effect of global warming It gets hotter and hotter and suddenly the planet melts. The cycles of these snow globes have profound effects on life The result was one more oxygen, which ultimately allowed for larger animals Dramatic changes in white land will bring us to the present stage, Starting around 540 million years ago A living planet.

Filled with diverse plants and amazing creatures. But these life forms are pitted against each other in the survival of the fittest. And rocks can make the difference between life and death. This conflict can be seen again in Morocco at the edge of the Atlas Mountains. Here, Bob Hazen and Adam Aaronsen are looking for evidence of an evolution The trick shows once again how life and the rocks took a big leap forward together. 520 million years ago, this valley was a shallow ocean, Filled with new forms of life. This is when the diversity of life on Earth exploded, and all thrived in a living sea. So, if you were a diver, and you were doing it to this coral reef, you would see all kinds Swimming in life.

It would be really surprising, and maybe very very colorful. There is one creature that dominates this ancient reef that Hazen wants to find. Nothing is there, there is nothing, and nothing is there. Fossil hunting is a game of luck and persistence but doesn't take long to Hazen to hit geological gold. Stop! Geez, look at that! This is amazing. Trilobite. See, there's another head over there, and chief over there. Two more. Boy, that's rich rock. Thirties here are amazing because these are They are the oldest animals you can find. They are preserved as you think in the fossil You can hold it in your hand.

Some of the trilobites were like horseshoe crabs, scrambling around the ocean floor. The reason why they are found as fossils today is because they developed An amazing evolution trick: shells. Trilobite shells were made of calcium carbonate, the same mineral found in Limestone, the rock on which the pyramids were built. In fact, life itself began to make rocks for its own benefit. And the idea went viral. If you have a shell, it will survive longer than this soft-bodied animal It has no coincidence. Trilobet was an advantage. It's survival of the fittest. The Trilobite Metal Shell is a new stage in the evolution of animals, Throwing our planet into the present stage: Green Earth. One rich in diverse life. Of humans belong to the triple lobes, We owe our evolution and survival the world of minerals. With shells, then eventually with bones and teeth setting the stage for life to grow taller And stronger. They are all evidence of life Selecting minerals for their own minerals has an evolutionary advantage. For centuries we thought of animals, minerals, they're separate kingdoms, right? But it turns out that they overlap, they're intertwined, co-evolution, That life makes minerals and metals give rise to new life forms.

You cannot separate the two. Life and rocks are perfectly intertwined through billions of years of Earth's history. One of Hazen's favorite places to see this intertwining history of life and Minerals in Calvert Cliffs along the Chesapeake Bay He and his wife Margie picked up shells and sharp teeth from a time of 18 million Years ago, when huge sea creatures swam here. this is good. You find teeth along the beach, five, six, Sometimes seven inches long with serrated edges and sharp spiky teeth. These were enormous creatures. This shark may be 50 or 60 feet long. These giants of the sea would have shrunk a big white today and that was Bones and teeth, created with minerals, which enabled them to grow large and strong. They were feeding on whales. Dolphins would have been a snack. They are one small part of the story of evolution, stretching back to the beginning of Earth. Life, rocks. Every part of the same story. Step by step around the earth, evolution, minerals and life arose The chemical reactions that carved the planet into what we see today.

And he helped create the life we ​​know. This is where you get a sense of how tight time and steady the change is. Life is creating and sculpting our surroundings in very wonderful ways, And just to learn about the life force to transform a planet. Of course, humans are transforming the planet, too. We build cities, build roads, change Atmospheric composition and ocean composition change.

There will be global changes. These changes, the consequences of which are now beginning to appear, It is the latest chapter in the saga land story. A story that began four and a half billion years ago With a rock..

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