- Smoggy skies 'created life on Earth'
Hazy, smoggy skies on baby Earth could have provided the chemical building blocks of the very first life on our planet, according to a study of one of Saturn's moons.
Primordial Earth likely had a layer of atmospheric haze, similar to the one currently on the moon Titan, that may have served as the principal reservoir of life's building blocks, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.One of Titan's most striking features is its thick hazy layer of organic aerosols, which arises from chemical reactions between the methane and nitrogen molecules high in the atmosphere, driven by ultraviolet light.
Prof Margaret Tolbert at the University of Colorado and colleagues mimicked Titan's chemistry by using UV lamps in various simulated atmospheres.
The researchers found that a methane-nitrogen mix would produce multiple types of long-chain hydrocarbons, including some aromatic compounds such as benzene.
The predicted products match well with some of the known components observed by the Huygens probe to Saturn. The researchers then added carbon dioxide gas to the mix to see if conditions that were probably present on early Earth would produce a similar haze.
"It turns out that organic haze can form over a wide range of methane and carbon dioxide concentrations," said Prof Tolbert. "This means that hazy conditions could have been present for many millions or even a billion years on Earth while life was evolving."
The researcher calculate that Earth could have produced more than100 million tons of aerosols each year, and thus these organic chemicals in the haze could have served as the primary ingredients for primitive life.
Do I really have to point out what's wrong with this picture?
2 comments:
Well, that's just as clear as smog! It appears that these "scientists" have already accepted that frigid lifeless Titon is on a certain and inevitable track toward producing life, therefore we can already use it to draw conclusions about what produced life here. All based upon the canonical authority of Arthur C. Clarke, I guess.
I understand that a person with a materialist world view is not going to accept a simple belief in special creation. With apologies to Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith, I myself have become rather agnostic on how to interpret the Genesis account. But...geez...does the University of Colorado have a mathematics department? Professor Marge might just want to take a stroll across campus and have a talk with one of here statistician colleagues about the proverbial monkeys with a typewriter pounding out the complete works of Shakespeare.
Speaking of Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, you can see a couple of his lectures online here.
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