Indira-London
Shiny_Rock
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2008
- Messages
- 308
If anyone needs more reasons to find diamonds fascinating, here is one more!
Diamonds may have acted as catalyst for life on Earth
by Rich Bowden - Jul 27 2008, 21:46
The Tech Herald - Indianapolis,IN,USA
Scientists have long believed the origins of life on Earth lay in a primordial soup of chemicals but have been undecided as to how the precursor amino acids were assembled into complex polymers necessary for the beginning of life.
Now a German study, published in the Aug 06 issue of the American Chemical Society''s journal Crystal Growth and Design, has suggested that diamonds played an important catalyst role.
In experiments carried out to confirm previous research from three decades ago, scientists Andrei Sommer, Dan Zhu, and Hans-Joerg Fecht at the University of Ulm, found that when treated with hydrogen, natural diamonds formed crystalline layers of water on the surface.
With water a prerequisite for life as we know it on Earth, the researchers suggest when primitive molecules landed on the surface of these hydrogenated diamonds a few billion years ago, it may have been enough to kick-start life.
"Hydrogenated diamond advances to the best of all possible origin-of-life platforms," reports LiveScience magazine.
According to the report, diamonds are crystallised forms of carbon which pre-date the oldest known forms of life on the planet.
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