Source: Business Insider
You might be inclined to think that something as complex as life should be rare, and that it probably took a very long time to come into existence.
But two new pieces of evidence suggest that life beyond Earth might be more likely than we think, and that it began on Earth almost instantaneously — at least on a geological time scale.
Last month, scientists uncovered evidence that life appeared on Earth 300 million years earlierthan we previously thought. They found fossils in Western Australia that date back 4.1 billion years.
That means that after the Earth formed, it took only 400 million years for life to get cranking. Four hundred million years is really just the blink of an eye compared to the planet’s 4.5-billion-year existence.
“Life on Earth may have started almost instantaneously,” one of the lead researchers, Mark Harrison, said in a press release. “With the right ingredients, life seems to form very quickly.”
And speaking of the right ingredients, scientists just uncovered evidence that our planet has had water on it since the very beginning. Water is essential to life — everywhere that we find water on Earth, we find life.
It’s so critical that many astronomers use a “follow the water” mantra to guide them in their search for life beyond Earth. That’s why scientists are pushing for more missions to Europa and Enceladus — two moons that we know have water, and therefore may support life.
But the origin of Earth’s water has always been a mystery to scientists. The popular theory is that it was carried here by asteroids that pummeled Earth and left the moon heavily cratered about 3.9 billion years ago, according to NASA. But this new discovery seems to rule out that theory as the initial source of Earth’s water.
The research was published on November 13 in the journal Science.