How did life get started?
I just read a really cool paper, revisiting a classic origin-of-life experiment. Like Miller and Urey before them, these researchers simulated a tiny pond on ancient earth, and struck it with "lightning."
They confirmed this produces biochemicals, but this time they used advanced microscopy to show it also produces tiny bubbles that look surprisingly lifelike on their own, and could serve as shelters for protolife.
Awesome finding! This really could have been important for life's origins (though, to be properly alive, the protocell would need to be able to make its own vesicle, and divide it). It's a little disheartening, though, as this new evidence makes the search for microbial fossils that much harder.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2413816122
#science #life #biology #cosmology #xenobiology