| Title | The Origins of Life Could Be Buried on the Moon | |
| Date | Friday January 30 2015, @03:50AM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the "X"-marks-the-spot dept. | ||
Life probably arose on Earth some 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, but all records of the momentous event have vanished—here on the Blue Marble, at least. Traces of our lost origin story might instead be buried on the Moon, according to new research published in the journal Astrobiology.
“Unlike the Earth, the Moon has been geologically quiet for billions of years, meaning there is a good chance these organic and volatile records remain relatively intact,” Richard Matthewman, the study’s lead author, told me.
Last summer, scientists concluded that escaped chunks of Earth could have brought fossil microbes to the Moon. But whether such critters could then be preserved for eons, creating a useful archive of early Earth life, remained unknown. Now we have evidence that they can. Matthewman and colleagues discovered that organic molecules can remain intact, possibly for a very long time, if they get trapped beneath ancient lunar lava flows.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-origins-of-life-could-be-buried-on-the-moon?
[Abstract]: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2014.1217
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