“If you want to make apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” – Carl Sagan
Life on earth is based on Specific chemical constituents: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur (CHNOPS). But what are the chances that life exists elsewhere in the universe? Will it use the same ingredients, or will there be different recipes for life? This is a difficult question to answer because there is a finite number of known chemicals that living organisms can take up. With this in mind, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created a new “cookbook” of hundreds of recipes that could potentially spawn living things.scientists announced The results indicate that many recipes for life may exist on distant planets and moons.
Researchers also published their new peer reviewed paper inside Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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Recipes for life may be more common than you think.
Jen Penn from the University of Wisconsin-Madison led a team that compiled a set of 270 different molecules for a new “life cookbook.” These molecular combinations contain atoms from the entire periodic table. These combinations can potentially give rise to what is called a persistent process. autocatalysis. Autocatalysis is when a chemical reaction produces molecules that encourage the same reaction to repeat itself.
Those reactions are an important part of how life develops. Although chemicals may bond relatively easily, repetition This is an important element. It is not enough to mix the right chemicals together only once. It needs to be a continuous process.As co-author and astrobiologist Betul Kashal explained:
The birth of life is actually the process of creating something from nothing. But such things don’t happen just once. Life is determined by chemistry and conditions that can generate self-reproducing reaction patterns.
Although we know that the building blocks of life are common throughout the universe, scientists previously thought that autocatalytic reactions were fairly rare in the universe. That means the recipes that gave rise to life on our planet may not be all that common. But new research suggests otherwise. Mr. Kashar said:
Such reactions were considered extremely rare. We show that it is actually not at all uncommon. All you have to do is find the right place.
looking for new recipes
To determine what other recipes for life are possible, researchers balancing reaction. In this case, there are two compounds containing the same element but with different numbers of electrons, and hence reaction states. They combine to create new compounds in which the elements are halfway through the starting reaction state. Two compounds, or reactants, differ in some way. oxidation number.
However, as mentioned earlier, the process must be iterative, i.e. autocatalytic. How does that happen? The reaction must produce a substance to start the process over again. This new reaction creates new substances, which becomes a self-sustaining cycle. Equalization reactions produce multiple copies of some of the molecules involved. This provides the material for the next step of autocatalysis. Additionally, each new turn in the cycle is faster than the previous one. This speeds up subsequent reactions.Co-authors and researchers zach adam Said:
If these conditions are suitable, you can start with a relatively small number of outputs. Each time you change the cycle, you expel at least one additional output, which speeds up the reaction and makes it even faster.
Researchers are making comparisons with rabbits. Rabbits mate and give birth to baby rabbits. The babies then grow up and mate, producing more rabbits. and so on.
Biosignatures and false positives
Learning more about potential other life recipes will also help scientists better distinguish between genuine biosignatures and false positives.paper state:
Such systematic evaluations may be necessary to advance our understanding. biogenesisto disentangle false-positive biosignatures from genuine biosignatures, and generally to limit the conditions suitable for the organization of complex chemical systems.
![It is a long spiral terrain with lots of rocks and images of different types of life on it.](https://earthsky.org/upl/2023/09/geological-time-spiral-life-on-Earth.png)
Test recipes for life in the earthly kitchen
Of course, we ourselves cannot go to all the places in the universe where such new recipes may be prepared. We also still don’t know exactly how life began on Earth. Therefore, scientists will need to test new recipes in kitchens and laboratories on Earth. Kashal says:
We will never know for sure what exactly happened to create life on this planet. We don’t have a time machine. However, by creating multiple planetary states in a test tube, we can understand how the dynamics that sustain life evolve in the first place.
Carl Sagan said that if you want to bake a pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. If you want to understand the universe, I think you need to bake some pies first.
Bottom line: Researchers in Wisconsin are exploring and testing new chemical recipes for the origin of life. This recipe for creating life may be common throughout the universe.
Source: Evaluation of stoichiometric autocatalysis across element groups
Via University of Wisconsin-Madison
Read more: Life beyond Earth: A universe of possibilities
Read more: What are the chances that Earth-like origins of life exist elsewhere?