Is the missing "life-ingredient" in today's Earth's existence the reason why we cannot recreate life?
Three important concepts about abiogenesis
Let's start with three important concepts
Definition of life
You'll need to give a good definition of life, because biologists actually don't have one (it is a matter of philosophy to define life, not biology).
Time it took for life to emerge
Life as we know it emerged only after a huge period of time (hundreds of millions of years), which we obviously cannot reproduce in a lab.
Current competition
Even if some kind of protolife would appear at some point, it would still have to face the competition with its veteran partners. Hypothetical protocells would be eaten by some microbe with no doubt.
Panspermia
The idea of panspermia (the hypothesis that the life may have appeard in outer space or in another planets, and then &quot;contaminate&quot; the Earth) has been on the scene in many forms for quite a long time. Regularly we hear of some study which proposes that life, or at least some key biomolecule, may have formed in asteroids, comets, in Mars or somewhere else. They're quite interesting, mainly because they suggest more than one way that life may have appeared.
Molybdenum
While molybdenum is rare in the Earth, it still exists and so the study doesn't deny the posibility that life may have formed in the Earth. Nowadays, molybdenum is used by many organisms as part of the core of some key enzymes, such as nitrogenase (the enzyme complex that catalyzes the conversion of molecular nitrogen into nitrate). Molybdenum has very interesting catalytic qualities and may have been a key factor for the origin of life.
Phosphorus on Mars
However, those studies say that Mars has higher concentration of phosphorus, which is one of the main components of life, and that was pretty rare in the early Earth. The hypothesis is interesting but, without experimental data, it is only that. The authors suggest that nowadays those phenomena may happen in Mars, so the hypothesis may be confirmed in a few years as the exploration of the Red Planet continues.