At the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a 1,268-meter mantle rock core has revealed the “witch’s cauldron” that creates life.
The 1,268-meter mantle rock core collected by an international team of scientists serves as evidence for what is known as “the life-generating reaction”, which refers to the process by which Earth transforms initially lifeless “building blocks of life” into the first components of living organisms.
According to SciTech Daily, this rock core was collected by the ocean drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution from a tectonic window exposed along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Scientists studying rock samples from the mantle rock core collected from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge – (Photo: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY)
This is the divergent plate boundary that runs along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and is also the longest mountain range in the world, separating the Eurasian tectonic plate from the North American plate in the northern Atlantic, as well as the African plate from the South American plate in the southern Atlantic.
Professor Johan Lissenberg from Cardiff University (UK), the lead author of the study, stated that the recovery of this mantle rock core is not only a record but also has immense value in providing insights into the structure and evolution of the Earth.
These findings help explain many processes still occurring today, such as the way magma forms for volcanic activities.
More importantly, the publication in the journal Science notes that this rock core has revealed how olivine, a mineral abundant in the mantle, reacts with seawater.
On Earth billions of years ago, this very reaction led to a series of chain chemical reactions that produced hydrogen and other molecules capable of fueling life.
The authors believe that this could be one of the fundamental processes for the origin of life on Earth.
Dr. Susan Q. Lang from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA), a co-author and leader of the Atlantic exploration team, noted that the deep-seated rocks they brought back are very similar to those present on the surface of the planet in its early period.
Thus, analyzing these rocks serves as a time window to reconstruct the chemical and physical environment that existed on early Earth, providing a stable fuel source along with other favorable conditions over geological time frames to nurture the first life forms.
This environment may also reveal how the seeds of life—possibly from the cosmos—were transformed into organisms in what scientists call the “primordial soup”, containing mysterious and enigmatic chemical reactions akin to a witch’s cauldron.
