origins of life

A totally new and highly controversial theory on the origin of life on earth, is set to cause a storm in the science world and has implications for the existence of life on other planets. Researchers in the United Kingdom claim that living systems originated from inorganic incubators – small compartments in iron sulphide rocks. The first cells were not living cells, they say, but inorganic ones made of iron sulphide and were formed not at the earth’s surface but in total darkness at the bottom of the oceans. Life, they say, is a chemical consequence of convection currents through the earth’s crust and in principle, this could happen on any wet, rocky planet.