article_snippet: Life on the Earth may have been kickstarted by a series of chemical reactions triggered by two simple but poisonous compounds that were plentiful on our planet four billion years ago.
article_snippet: Chemists claim Chemists may have finally solved the riddle of how life first got going on the Earth.
article_snippet: This suggests that life may well have first emerged here on the Earth - out of a toxic soup of poisonous gas - rather than being carried to our planet by a comet or meteorite from outer space.
article_snippet: But the researchers behind the new study say that meteorite impacts probably still played a key role in giving life a first leg up on the ladder towards existence.
article_snippet: Scientists have long believed that the building blocks for life first began occurring one after another although the debate for which came first has been controversial.
article_snippet: The conditions necessary to create all of these were found to be the same, meaning a single set of chemical reactions could have given rise to life's basic building blocks simultaneously.
article_snippet: One of the great mysteries shrouding the origins of life on Earth is how complex organisms began to take shape.
article_snippet: Theory should hold that 'short' fragments of genetic material would have reproduced in abundance, leaving longer strands - and thus complex life - behind.
article_snippet: But new research has revealed that longer strands may have thrived in volcanic 'pores' on the young Earth - ultimately allowing life to evolve to the complexity we see today.
article_snippet: new research found that water-filled micropores in hot rocks may have acted as the nurseries in which life on Earth began.
article_snippet: One crucial precondition for the origin of life is that comparatively simple biomolecules must have had opportunities to form more complex structures.
article_snippet: comparatively simple biomolecules must have had opportunities to form more complex structures, in turn, had to be capable of reproducing comparatively simple biomolecules must have had opportunities to form more complex structures, storing genetic information in a chemically stable form.
article_snippet: Creating longer strands of RNA to store genetic information would have been essential - but genetic information simply wouldn't have been possible in most conditions on Earth.
article_snippet: Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist who studies the origin of life at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and was not involved in the study, told the journal Science: 'This is a very important paper. '
article_snippet: This proposes for the first time a scenario by which almost all of the essential building blocks for life could be assembled in one geological setting.'
highlights_snippet: Their tests would have been plentiful on the Earth 4 billion years ago .
  