Romon Yang

Essay

PHYS1160

Topic: Review the earliest evidence for life on Earth. What form does the
evidence take and where is it found. Discuss the controversies relating to
some of this evidence and give your conclusion on the earliest date at
which we can be confident that life was present on Earth.

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There have been many interpretations as to how life began on Earth, and it is only logical
that there are so many adaptations to an event that happened billions of years ago. Some of
these theories include the theory of ‘panspermia’ (S. Joshi, 2008) which suggested that
comets that contained organic molecules landed on Earth somewhere between 3.8 to 4
billion years ago. Other theories included religious beliefs, such as the Christian theory
where God is the creator of life; however, this theory is an abstract representation and will
not be reviewed further into this paper. It is then not enough to simply select one of these
theories as for the truest without providing some sort of evidence or reliable data. Thus, it is
important that we produce scientific facts in order bring forth legitimacy to the theories
presented, to come to an accurate and logical conclusion as to when life truly originated on
Earth. Within this paper, I will be discussing my research and beliefs as to when the first
signs of life appeared on Earth as cyanobacteria. Then I will be focusing mainly on the
controversies within scientific studies as to how life formed, paying particular attention to
the studies of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, in conjunction with the Miller-Urey
experiment, to disapprove Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation. Finally, I will
conclude by briefly discussing the process of carbon dating and how it has allowed us to gain
confidence in determining the earliest date of life on Earth.
It is hard to pinpoint exactly when the very first signs of
life on Earth occurred during such a chaotic time with no
oxygen and extreme temperatures. However, fossil
records and discoveries have shown that the earliest life
originated within stromatolites around 3.5 billion years
ago. (Nogrady, 2016) Stromatolites are the sedimentary
rock that is most commonly found in areas of shallow but
large bodies of water and are formed by the layering of
single-celled microbes called cyanobacteria. Even today, some stromatolites have been
sighted in Western Australia and an 800-
Fig 1.0 – Dome-shaped stromatolites
kilometre collective seen at Shark Bay in Perth.
(Del Cid, n.d.)
(Chidrawi, Robson and Hollis, 2008) Since most
of the original cyanobacteria are found fossilised, geologists and astrobiologists can treat
these crucial samples to determine the time of the first appearance of life.
Cyanobacteria are classified as prokaryotic cells; they are cells that have no nucleus, as
suggested by the direct Greek translation of ‘prokaryote’ meaning ‘before shell’ and shell, in
this case, referring to the nucleus. It is because of the formation of these bacteria which
dramatically changed the Earth’s atmosphere from highly concentrated carbon dioxide to
the oxygen rich atmosphere we have today. (Chidrawi, Robson and Hollis, 2008) This is only
possible because of the photosynthetic properties within the cellular structure of the
prokaryotes. It is due to the gradual oxygenation of the atmosphere that allowed
eukaryotes to emerge from prokaryotes. Eukaryotes are more complex cells that require
oxygen to produce energy that then allowed the formation of the first small organisms.
Thus, without the existence of the oxygen-producing prokaryotes, the existence of more
complicated multicellular organisms that evolved from eukaryotes would have never been
possible. (Department of Mines and Petroleum, n.d.)

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 Fig 1.1 – short
table summary
of when the
Earth became
oxygenated due
to
photosynthetic
cyanobacteria
(Chidrawi,
Robson and
Hollis, 2008)

With the knowledge, that stromatolites were the first living things on Earth, comes great
questioning as to how they formed and from what?
Aristotle proposed that living things could simply generate from non-living matter and that
matter ‘grows by means of itself’ (R. Zwier, n.d.). This was quite a logical assumption at the
time due to the lack of technology and knowledge to see and understand microorganisms as
they observed maggots emerging from raw meat and the formation of mice from a loaf of
bread. In the late 16th century, John Needham also carried out an experiment where he
placed boiled broth in a bottle and sealed it. Days later, he reported that there were signs of
life in the broth and concluded that ‘life has been created from nonlife’ (E. Moulton, 2004).
It was later on that scientists realised the broth was not boiled for long enough to kill all
microorganisms inside. Many scientists have since tried to challenge this theory but had
either not enough evidence or the experiment
contained flaws.
It was until the studies of Louis Pasteur and his
famous swan-necked flask experiment which
correctly refuted the theory of spontaneous
generation. This was also partially due to the
advancement in technology and the invention of
the microscope that biologists could finally
understand how micro life functions.
If we refer to the figure on the left, we can see
the three variations to the swan-neck flask
experiment. The first row displays the flask
being heated with the broth inside, and as the
mixture boils, water evaporates and condenses
on the curved part of the flask or the swan-neck.
Fig 1.2 – Swan-neck
experiment by Louis Pasteur
(Wikimedia Commons, 2015) z5060322
What this effectively does is prevents any bacteria from entering the flask as it is trapped by
the section of water. The second row starts with the boiling of the broth for sterilisation but
then the neck of the flask is removed to allow the mixture to be exposed to air. Bacteria was
then able to form. With these variables considered, Pasteur was then able to devise that
there were airborne bacteria and supported this claim by conducting the third and final
variation. He tipped the water section, which was used as a bacterial barrier, back into the
sterile broth and to no surprise, bacteria formed. Thus, this experiment was critical in
negating the theory of spontaneous generation, but it still did not show how life formed
from the Earth. (Brewing, n.d.)
The constituents of Earth just before the formation of cyanobacteria were only gaseous
molecules in the atmosphere, such as nitrogen, ammonia, carbon dioxide, carbon
monoxide, methane and water vapour and liquid water. This then put forward questions as
to how organic matter formed from simple gases. Through the examination of the Miller-
Urey experiment, the formation of organic material from the gaseous atmosphere would be
clarified.
Using the figure on the right as my point of
reference, it shows the apparatus, set-up and
process of the Miller-Urey experiment conducted in
1953. The sole purpose of the experiment was to
investigate the possibilities of converting gaseous
compounds into organic matter. (Rubin, 2013)
The experiment utilised water, hydrogen gas,
ammonia and methane as its core components as
these gases were proposed to exist in higher
concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere. In the
main reaction chamber, a pair of electrodes is used
to stimulate lightning sparks that act as primitive
conditions on Earth, while water vapour is constantly
circulated throughout the system. (Rubin, 2013) Fig 1.3 – Setup of Miller-Urey
The sparks from the electrodes create enough energy to experiment (Wikimedia Commons,
stimulate a chemical reaction between the gases as they 2015)
become dissolved in the water vapour, which condenses and is collected at the bottom of
the system. It was also critical that there was no oxygen present within the reaction
chamber for two main reasons; the original Earth’s atmosphere contained no oxygen, but
also the presence of oxygen within the reaction will cause an explosion with the electric
sparks, thus it was crucial that the chamber was in a vacuumed state prior to the addition of
gases. (Chidrawi, Robson and Hollis, 2008)
After a week of having the system running continuously, the condensed water sample was
collected and the cooled water was analysed. Miller and Urey found that around 15% of the
carbon from the system is now converted to organic compounds and 2% of that carbon
have formed into amino acids, the critical building blocks of life, with glycine as the highest

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concentration. Glycine is one of the 4 components within the formation of DNA. Even
though the experiment did not produce any life forms, it showed that primitive atmospheric
conditions were able to stimulate the development of organic molecules and thus shows the
ability for the formation of life on Earth. (Rubin, 2013)
To conclude this paper, I am going to briefly discuss the process of carbon dating and how it
has allowed us to recreate a timeline from the past and allow us to understand the age of
the planet and beyond.
Carbon dating is a process which involves measuring the radioactivity of carbon-14 within
ancient samples to determine its age. Since carbon is present within all living things, when it
dies, the carbon-14 is what remains and will decay naturally. (Radioactivity.com, 2017) Since
the decay of carbon-14 takes thousands of years, it allows scientists and archaeologists to
determine the age of a sample quite easily. (Ncse.com, n.d.) With the half-life of carbon-14
being around 6 thousand years, researchers can easily calculate the proportionality of
radioactivity remaining in an aged sample and compare it to a fresh sample to calculate how
old the tested sample is. (Hyperphysics, n.d.)
Although there are other dating methods such as the molecular record, I believe in order to
calculate the age of living samples, such as stromatolites and prehistoric organisms, carbon
dating would provide the most appropriate results. As such, scientists were able to uncover
stromatolite samples that were approximately 3.48 billion years old located in Western
Australia. (Nogrady, 2016)
Therefore, it can be appropriate to finalise that the earliest form of life developed from the
gases that were present in the formation of the Earth’s atmosphere. The conditions at the
time allowed the formation of organic molecules which then developed into the most
primitive forms of life as bacteria, more appropriately, cyanobacteria. These prokaryotes
then formed stromatolites and developed photosynthetic properties which then began to
oxygenate Earth to allow more complex forms of life to exist. We are now more confident
about this information due to the development of dating techniques such as carbon dating
to give a more precise estimate for the formation of life on Earth.

Word Count: 1677

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References and Bibliography

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