"Diamonds May Have Jump-started Life on Earth"
LiveScience (July 26, 2008)
"One of the greatest mysteries in science is how life began. Now one group of researchers says diamonds may have been life's best friend.
"Scientists have long theorized that life on Earth got going in a primordial soup of precursor chemicals. But nobody knows how these simple amino acids, known to be the building blocks of life, were assembled into complex polymers needed as a platform for genesis.
"Diamonds are crystallized forms of carbon that predate the oldest known life on the planet. In lab experiments aimed to confirm work done more than three decades ago, researchers found that when treated with hydrogen, natural diamonds formed crystalline layers of water on the surface. Water is essential for life as we know it...."
Fascinating speculation: but, as the article says, there's nothing certain yet.
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