Researchers are always trying to dig into the mysteries of our planet and?how life on this planet came into existence.?
And now, one researcher claims that life on Earth could have been due to trillions of lightning strikes on our planet, over a billion years.
Reported first by LiveScience, ?this is according to a study by Benjamin Hess from Yale University¡¯s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. He says that lightning was the source of reactive phosphorus on Earth and as we all know, phosphorus is really crucial for any lifeform to exist on Earth.
To put this in perspective, let¡¯s talk about phosphates. These are ions that are composed using three oxygen atoms and one phosphorus atom. Phosphates are crucial for the formation of DNA, RNA and ATP -- the powerhouse of cells, as well as being a crucial component of bones, teeth etc.
Roughly four billion years ago, Earth had water, CO2 but it didn¡¯t have phosphorus readily available. It was underneath rocks that were insoluble in water. A mineral called schreibersite is known to be the source of phosphorus, but researchers believe the only way it got to Earth was through meteor strikes.?
Hess however reveals that a few trillion jolts of lightning were one of the ways of making schreibersite right here on Earth. He explained that a lightning jolt can get as hot as 2,760 celsius that could result in the forging of minerals that didn¡¯t exist before.?
To support this claim, Hess and his team examined a lightning-blasted clump of the rock dubbed fulgurite that was earlier found in an excavation in Illinois.?
The team discovered little balls of schreibersite inside the rock as well as a few other minerals. Taking this as tentative proof the team then tried to calculate if enough lightning was struck to develop schreibersite.?
They looked at models based on Earth¡¯s early atmosphere to get a number on how many lightning strikes would have occurred each year. They found out that roughly over a billion years ago, a quintillion lightning strikes would have hit our planet, each forming some quantities of phosphorus. As per their estimates, between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago, lightning strikes would have contributed to between 110 to 11,000 kilograms of phosphorus every year.?
Hess explained in a statement to LiveScience, "For life to form, there just needs to be one location that has the right ingredients. If [250 lbs.] of phosphorus a year were concentrated in a single tropical island arc, then yes, it may well have been enough. But it's more likely that will happen if there are many such locations."
It is still uncertain whether lightning only strikes at potential land and not the ocean to create the impact for forming life on Earth, and this is something we might not be able to pinpoint exactly, but this study highlights that mathematically the theory is plausible.