The simulation, conducted by a team of Japanese planetary materials scientists, produced compounds required to form the first cell and every subsequent organism.
"We use shock experiments to recreate the conditions surrounding the impact of chondritic meteorites into an early ocean," wrote the researchers in Nature Geoscience. "Organic molecules on the early Earth may have arisen from such impact syntheses."
Discovery: Life and Minerals Evolve Together
Before life evolved on Earth, the slow, inexorable grind of plate tectonics created a total of 1,500 mineral species. Now, Hazen said, most minerals require living creatures to spring into existence.
"That's about as far as we think you can get without life," he said. That means about two-thirds of all known minerals depend on Earth's living creatures to survive.
