Violent young Sun may have started up life on Earth

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Plazma Inferno!, May 24, 2016.

  1. Plazma Inferno! Ding Ding Ding Ding Administrator

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    Life on Earth may have sprung from bombardment by a youthful Sun lashing out with flares as potent as a thousand trillion exploding atomic bombs, a new study suggests.
    4 billion years ago, large solar flares and their associated energetic particles could have provided the planet its first ingredients for life.
    Researchers at NASA have found that when the Sun was half a billion years old, large solar flares—larger than any recorded by humans—could have changed the very chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere. What’s more, bombardment of the planet by high-energy particles from those jets of superhot solar plasma might have prompted organic molecules considered precursors to life to form from simpler inorganic molecules then abundant on primordial Earth.

    https://eos.org/articles/did-solar-flares-cook-up-life-on-earth
    http://phys.org/news/2016-05-violent-young-sun-seeded-life.html

    Paper: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2719.html
     

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