A new study of the POT suggests that the origin of life on Earth could be linked to powerful solar flares known as “superflares”an investigation that can forever change the perception of how life on the planet originated.
According to astrobiologists, during the planet’s first 100 million years, the Sun was 30% dimmer than it is now, making it more likely that it would emit these massive solar outbursts, according to meteored.
These superflares would have ejected particles at speeds close to the speed of light, which would have collided with the Earth’s atmosphere, triggering chemical reactions responsible for the formation of amino acidsthe fundamental building blocks of life.
Did life originate thanks to the Sun?
This theory challenges the most widely held belief about the origin of life, which suggests that started in a mixture of chemicals with energy gains caused by lightning, heat and other energy sources.
Science has come a long way and it has been discovered that the Earth’s atmosphere was different in its early days. Ammonia and methane are thought to have been less abundant, while carbon dioxide and molecular nitrogen were the main components. This implies that it would take much more energy than lightning to produce amino acids through a chemical reaction in that configuration.
It is here that NASA astrobiologists propose that the origin of life could have been triggered by super solar flares rather than lightning. Using data from the Kepler mission, support the theory that energetic particles released by the Sun would regularly collide with Earth’s atmosphere, giving rise to chemical reactions.
To test this hypothesis, the team of scientists created a mixture of gases similar to Earth’s early atmosphere and exposed it to simulated superflares in the laboratory. They discovered that the energy released by these solar explosions would be enough to produce amino acids from the gases present in the primitive atmosphere.
This theory could have important implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. Currently, scientists are focused on the search for planets with conditions similar to those of Earth, such as the presence of liquid water and a similar atmosphere. However, if the origin of life on Earth was related to super solar flares, then life could have arisen on planets not currently considered habitable.