It's been speculated for at least a decade now that geochemistry spawned biochemistry and life as we know it. This appears to be the latest instance of this pattern. One of the most notable examples is geothermal processes simply creating calm energy gradients that are stable for billions of years (e.g., underwater alkaline vents), which can then essentially "manufacture" organic compounds, which naturally assemble into more complex compounds like magnetic Lego blocks, which ...

I like to think of the Earth as a supercomputer running a vast self-interactive chemical computation of unfathomable scale for an unfathomably long amount of time. In this view, the Earth is roughly a ~10^38 ops/sec dissipative self-modifying search engine, of which life captures roughly ~10^35 ops/sec into metabolism, heredity, ecological competition, and evolutionary search. Once proper biological evolution kicked in, with some bumps along the road, it has had a general tendency to reallocate that immense compute capacity in a way that increases search adaptivity per joule by finding and stacking "search accelerators" (prebiotic geochemistry/biochemistry, replicators, cells, DNA/RNA/protein systems, mitochondria, sexual reproduction, multicellularity, nervous systems, intelligence / brains, language / culture, science / technology, ?).

Reminds me of the Gamma Forest at Brookhaven National Labs. From 1961 thru 1978 they irradiated a section of the pine barrens forest with a cesium-137 source just to see what would happen. It sterilized the soil and hardly anything grows there, almost 50 years later.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/pJYr6qiZnMdVwLJS6

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/brookhaven-gamma-forest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsuiLxcDuHY&t=925s

Funnily enough, the title made me think about the PhD of a friend, and it turns out it's actually his lab that is featured here, and his name is even mentioned. What a star!

> They’re finding that the chemistry of life is not exclusive to life, he added. “It’s the chemistry of geology.”

This has me excited for missions to Europa and Enceladus. Vast quantities of tidal energy flexing unseen ocean floors for millennia is bound to produce some interesting chemistry, if not life.

Soil's amazing. So is fungal diversity. Fungal insect interactions. Bryophytes. Slime molds. Ferns. If you have a lawn, do the world a favor and remove it. No need to mow and you'll be amazed at the world that emerges. Especially with a microscope.

Theory on the emergence of photosynthesis whereby chlorophyll-like structures first evolved from harvesting heat rather than light: https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/mjpapay/45240-the-first-...

This is huge news if true for evaluating soil experiments on Mars. They could give false positives for life if they only look for metabolic products.

This is like saying "wood burns, even when the tree is dead" but much, much slower.

The disequilibrium (sugars and free O₂) were produced by living organisms, and this is just the gradual drift back to a lower energy state. CO₂ is common in the universe, and not at all a sign of life. O₂ and sugars are rare.

This is great, if you have significant amounts of free oxygen to work with, which early earth evidently did not. Would be interesting to see if anaerobic metabolism could also occur without cellular confinement.

The actual publication is available here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adw9065

  The present study challenges the traditional view that the *respiration of 
  organic carbon to CO2* is an exclusively intracellular process, revealing that 
  *organic compound respiration can occur spontaneously in an extracellular 
  context in soils*.

On the surface, it looks like they rediscovered that oxidation of organic / carbonaceous compounds occurs at low temperatures independently of presence of living organisms. The real contribution of the paper would be in elucidation of the specific mechanisms of oxidation of these organic compounds (e.g. via abiotic catalysis).

Compare to this paper from 2003:

https://sci-hub.kvnp.top/10.1016/s0360-1285(03)00042-x

  Coal oxidation at low temperatures is the major heat source responsible for 
  the self-heating and spontaneous combustion of coal and is an important source 
  of greenhouse gas emissions. This review focuses on the chemical reactions 
  occurring during low-temperature oxidation of coal. Current understanding 
  indicates that this process involves consumption of O2, formation of solid 
  oxygenated complexes, thermal decomposition of solid oxygenated complexes and 
  generation of gaseous oxidation products. Parameters, such as mass change, 
  heat release, oxygen consumption, and formation of oxidation products in the 
  gas or solid phase, have been used to qualitatively and quantitatively 
  describe the oxidation process. Reaction mechanisms have been proposed to 
  explain the characteristics of consumption of O2, and formation of oxidation 
  products in the gas and solid phases. Various kinetic models have also been 
  developed to describe the rate of oxygen consumption and the rates of 
  formation of gaseous oxidation products in terms of the rate parameters of the 
  relevant reactions, oxidation time, temperature, and initial concentration of 
  oxygen in the oxidising medium.

soil is a biological construct and only occurs on Earth, the regolith on other planets will not support life without major amendments and modifications. there are orders of magnitude more types of minerals on earth that found in any sample from an extra terestrial source, and while not proven conclusivly there is strong evidence that the bulk of earthly minerals, have biological origins in there creation. what is not disputed is that the entire top 10km or so of our planet has biological components and biological modifications, 3 billion years will do.that to a world, the point bieng, is that extraterestrial regolith would be the substance to use in substantiating the premise under consideration, but was not.

Reminds me of the abiogenic petroleum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

Not directly related, but it made me think of the "A New Physics Theory of Life" article in the same magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-o...

AFIAK only Hydrofluorocarbons detection would be considered a unambiguous signal of life, and those require technology. Life very much seems to be a natural process, largely un-distinguishable from other natural processes. Detection will come from Preponderance of evidence rather than a silver-bullet.

It feels next would be trying isolate the component that make CO2. Try to use smaller sample. Put them under microscope, etc.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.

I'm not going to track down the references to see if they did this, but surely protein mass spectrometry could show if they have enzymes that are still there.

As anyone working in a large corporation can immediately tell you, "dead but breathing" is much more common than one might guess.

Genesis 2:7 (NIV)

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Obligatory Asimov: 'The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but 'That's funny...”'

The climate change deniers are gonna love this. CO2 from soil.

What if life was born under the surface?

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Life uh, finds a way.