(NLĐO) - At the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a 1,268-meter-long mantle core has revealed the "witch's cauldron" that gave birth to life.
A 1,268-meter-long mantle rock core collected by an international team of scientists is evidence of what is called the "birth-generating reaction," that is, the way the Earth transforms the initial, inanimate "building blocks of life" into the first components of an organism.
Scientists are studying rock samples from mantle cores extracted from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge - Photo: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
According to SciTech Daily, this rock core was collected by the oceanographic drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution from a tectonic window exposed along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
It is the rifting plate boundary running along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and is also the longest mountain range in the world , separating the Eurasian plate from the North American plate in the North Atlantic, as well as the African plate from the South American plate in the South Atlantic.
Professor Johan Lissenberg from Cardiff University (UK), the lead author of the study, said that recovering this mantle rock core is not only a record, but its greatest value lies in the fact that it can tell us about the structure and evolution of the Earth.
They help explain many processes that still occur in reality, for example, how magma forms for volcanic activity.
But more importantly, the paper published in the journal Science revealed that this rock core has shown how olivine, a mineral abundant in the mantle, reacts with seawater.
On young Earth billions of years ago, this very reaction triggered a chain reaction of chemical reactions, producing hydrogen and other molecules that could fuel life.
The authors believe this may be one of the fundamental processes behind the origin of life on Earth.
Dr. Susan Q. Lang, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA), co-author and leader of the Atlantic expedition, said that the rocks deep within the core they brought back are very similar to what was present on the planet's surface in its early stages.
Therefore, analyzing them provides a window into time to reconstruct the chemical and physical environment that existed on early Earth, which provided a stable fuel source and other favorable conditions over a long geological timeframe to nurture the first life forms.
And it is this environment that may reveal how the seeds of life—most likely from outer space—were transformed into organisms in what scientists call the "primordial soup," containing chemical reactions as mysterious and enigmatic as a witch's cauldron.
Source: https://nld.com.vn/he-lo-dieu-kho-ngo-ve-nguon-goc-su-song-trai-dat-tu-dai-tay-duong-196240813082029485.htm
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