Billions Of Lightning Bolts May Have Jump-started Life On Earth
研究表明，闪电可能给地球带来了生命
According to a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, trillions of lightning strikes over a billion of years of Earth’s early history may have helped unlock crucial phosphorus compounds that paved the way for life on Earth.
根据发表在《自然通讯》杂志上的一项新研究，在地球早期10亿年的历史中，数万亿次闪电可能帮助释放了关键的磷化合物，为地球上的生命铺平了道路。
“In our study, we show for the first time that lightning strikes were likely a significant source of reactive phosphorus on Earth around the time that life formed [3.5 billion to 4.5 billion years ago],” lead study author Benjamin Hess from Yale University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, told Live Science.
It’s all about the phosphorus — or rather, the organic materials that phosphorus atoms can make when combined with other bio-essential elements.
Lightning strikes can heat up surfaces to nearly 2,760 degrees Celsius, forging new minerals that weren’t there before. In the new study, Hess and his colleagues examined a lightning-blasted clump of rock, called fulgurite, which was previously excavated from a site in Illinois. The team found that little balls of schreibersite had formed within the rock, along with a host of other glassy minerals.
With tentative proof in hand that lightning strikes can create phosphorus-rich schreibersite, the team next had to calculate whether enough lightning could have struck early Earth to release a significant amount of the element into the environment. Using models of Earth’s early atmosphere, the researchers estimated how many lightning strikes may have fallen over the planet each year.
