Life On Earth Was Sparked By Underwater Electricity: NASA

Energy is vital to give life to being. NASA proves that an "underwater electrical boost" may have led to the first few life forms.

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, claim that they have proven how much electricity was required to give life---only one volt.

It has always been held that "underwater hydrothermal vents" in laboratories can test whether the chemicals bubbling up can "spur the growth of molecules, bacteria, amino acids and so on."

The chimney-shaped structures on the ocean floor, pumping out heat, if created in the lab can show that vents could make electricity. "Called the 'alkaline vent hypothesis', the theory suggests that first life could not have made it without a hot boost of alkaline chimneys - tube-like structures that range from mere centimeters to several meters tall and are typically made from porous minerals," according to rt.

The idea was proposed in 1989. Tiny membranes separating the compartments within the vents had electrical and proton gradients, which "emulated the processes critical to synthesizing living things". They generated energy and organic compounds that could help simple organisms to grow.

"These chimneys can act like electrical wires on the seafloor," Laurie Barge with the JPL at Pasadena says. "We're harnessing energy as the first life on Earth might have."

Such findings can lead to great assumptions.

"Life doesn't want to get electrocuted, but needs just the right amount of electricity," explains Michael Russell of JPL, the father of the hypothesis. "This new experiment confirms what that amount of electricity is - just under a volt."

This theory was proved over a quarter century ago, while the vents were conjectured a decade before they were found at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

"With the right recipe, maybe one chimney alone will be able to light the LED - or instead, we could use that electrochemical energy to power other reactions," Barge says. "We can also start simulating higher temperature and pressures that occur at hydrothermal vents."