How Did Life Begin on Earth? We Asked a NASA Scientist

MORE STORIES
Earth
Jul 24, 2023
How Did Life Begin on Earth? We Asked a NASA Scientist: Episode 42
How did life begin on Earth?

Well, actually, we don't know. But even trying to answer it is super fun because it takes us to like all these crazy, imaginative places and environments.

Some people think it started in hydrothermal vents at the deepest, darkest, warmest parts of the ocean.

Some people think it created in these little ponds that materials collected and concentrated within.

And other people think it maybe formed in environments that were a combination of those things, like maybe a big impactor came in from space and made a pond with a vent at the bottom of it.

And part of how we research this is by looking at those environments, the wild places that could have existed on early Earth that led to the formation of life, the chemistry that's required for life to have originated, and then also thinking about what life is in the first place and what life requires.

At NASA, we fund the chemists and the geologists and the astronomers and the planetary scientists

that you need to bring to the same table to answer those questions in detail.

We do that through NASA's Astrobiology program. And we incorporate thinking on how life originated or could originate elsewhere into our missions and our planning to look for life on planets beyond Earth whether that's on Mars or in the ocean worlds of our outer solar system, or with big space telescopes that could look for signs of life on planets around other stars.

So how did life begin on Earth?

We don't know, but we're working on it because it's important both to the story of here, our history of life on our home planet.

It's important also for our search for life beyond Earth, and answering the other question of, "Are we alone?"