The first step to answering that question is finding out whether those reactions were even possible on early Earth. Did Earth’s first life forms create energy with the same chemical reactions used by living organisms today? Last year, researchers in JPL’s Origins and Habitability Lab simulated the chemistry of early Earth and carried out a key chemical reaction involved in metabolism, the process living organisms use to convert fuel (such as sunlight or food) into energy. By re-creating the conditions that would have been found on our planet roughly 4 billion years ago, scientists can narrow down the possible chemical reactions that could have taken place then – including those that may have been critical to the emergence of life here, or that might signal the presence of life on another world. In the Origins and Habitability Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, you can find a world in a test tube – specifically, a simplified simulation of early Earth.
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