The origins of life on Earth

[DRSB]

We might not have come from primordial soup after all.

For nearly nine decades, science’s favourite explanation for the origin of life has been the 'primordial soup'. This is the idea that life began from a series of chemical reactions in a warm pond on Earth’s surface, triggered by an external energy source such as lightning strike or ultraviolet (UV) light.

But recent research adds weight to an alternative idea, that life arose deep in the ocean within warm, rocky structures called hydrothermal vents.

A study published last month in Nature Microbiology suggests the last common ancestor of all living cells fed on hydrogen gas in a hot iron-rich environment, much like that within the vents. Advocates of the conventional hypothesis have been sceptical that these findings should change our view of the origins of life.

But the hydrothermal vent hypothesis, which is often described as exotic and controversial, explains how living cells evolved the ability to obtain energy, in a way that just wouldn’t have been possible in a primordial soup.

http://www.sciencealert.com/were-scient ... e-on-earth

[Svartalf]

Not sure, hydrothermal vents support extremophile life, and there's no model for evolving common life from extremophile ancestry.