Can you picture a barren world? Before you lies a volcanic landscape with no flora or fauna. Scattered across this grey and black expanse are shallow bodies of water. In each of them simmers a particular mixture of chemicals and physical conditions that could have served as the source of life on our planet.

Some scientists have theorised that the scene when life first arose on Earth around 4 billion years ago may have looked much like this. A study centred on a lake in British Columbia, Canada, lends new support to the idea.

According to study co-author David Catling (David Catling), a professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, a shallow, salty body of water sitting on volcanic rock and known as Last Chance Lake (Last Chance Lake) suggests that carbonate-rich lakes on Earth could have been the cradle of life. The finding, published on 9 January in the journal Nature, could advance scientific understanding of how life began.

We were able to look for the specific conditions that people use to synthesise the building blocks of life in nature, Catling explained. We think we have a very promising place to look for the origin of life.

Catling and his colleagues first learned of the lake as a place to focus their research after a literature search turned up an unpublished master's thesis from the 1990s that recorded unusually high phosphate levels in the lake. The researchers had to see it for themselves.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/17/world/last-chance-lake-origin-of-life-phosphate-scn/index.html