Life's First Scalding Steps

摘要

In a back room at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (D.C.), Jay A. Bran-des packs water and powdered rock into a 24-carat-gold capsule not much bigger than a daily vitamin. He injects gases like those spewed by a volcano and then seals the receptacle. Finally, he places the shiny amulet inside "the bomb," a device isolated from the rest of the world by steel panels salvaged from a scrapped battleship. Within, the mixture is besieged with scorching temperatures and bone-crushing pressures, forces like those at work at seafloor geysers. Brandes and his colleagues then look inside the tortured capsule for evidence of the chemical steps that sparked the beginnings of life. Using no more than the cocktail of chemicals discharged at undersea hy-drothermal vents, the researchers are trying to mimic reactions that occur within living cells.