As my first post for this blog, I spent days thinking about the best way to introduce my writing. There are so many things I want to talk about and share, so many images, places, and topics that I wish I could magically spill onto the blog all at once. But you’re going to make me work for it; and I’m okay with that. Since I started getting more and more into studying Geology, volcanoes especially (roughly five or so years ago), I wanted to share my thoughts and my findings in a way that anyone listening (or reading, in this case) would be as excited about it as I was. So here goes.
As I was saying, I wanted my first post to be about what started my love affair with volcanology. I lied, because my love affair started when I was a child climbing around Lassen Volcanic National Park with my family. Today I’ll be talking about something that was brought up in my Oceanology class years ago at the community college I was attending. I’ve been lucky as a student – I was blessed with amazing English and science teachers, and Professor Bolasky was no exception. He was my Oceanography professor, and on this particular day was lecturing on the geologic timeline. About halfway through his lecture, after going over the creation of our solar system, earth’s early and incredibly turbulent atmosphere and environment, he started talking about early, single-cell organisms living in earth’s oceans; from there came the oxygen revolution, more developed forms of life, and so on and so on.
Hold it. How did the bacteria get there in the first place?
Your first question too, right? I had to know, so of course I asked. What I was told changed everything about Geology and volcanoes for me.
Going back to earth’s early atmosphere, not only was it toxic, but it was extremely turbulent, with lots of what you might call “atmospheric disturbances.” Lighting, in other words. Now, you have your oceans, and should give most credit for their existence to volcanic activity. Mineral and salt deposits from volcanic eruptions, mixed with water vapor helped provide enough water to eventually create earth’s oceans. Trust me, this is important to know, because these are all building blocks for what I’m about to discuss.
So far we have lighting and mineral-rich water. Now you need a spark.
That “spark” is lighting, and when it hits the water something very curious happens. The strike of lighting hitting the sea water produced an early strand of RNA, thus providing essential building blocks for life. But why? Why is it all these elements somehow perfectly lined up and give us amino acids, and thus primitive strands of RNA?
First of all, you must have extremely high temperatures in order for this to work. At these temperatures, minerals like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur are extracted from volcanic rock. These gases and minerals are important ingredients for the creation of organic life. To explain a bit further, an experiment was done at the University of Chicago, conducted by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey to recreate the environment necessary to spur the first hints of ancient proteins and RNA strands: “They heated a closed flask filled with water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen gases; these were believed to be the primary components of the sea and atmosphere when life began. They boiled the water in the flask and shot and electric spark, imitating a lightning bolt, through the vapor. The reaction produced among other things two amino acids, the constituents of protein” (Cone 189).
There you have it, a toxic and gaseous atmosphere, electricity, and mineral-dense water. What do the hydrothermal vents have to do with this topic, then? In short, they have everything to do with it. The experiment done in Colorado shows that life could start in a toxic and otherwise uninhabitable environment. Hydrothermal vents share that characteristic: they seem uninhabitable, but in truth they are teeming with life. There are bacteria, plankton, fish, crustaceans, and other organisms thriving around these super-heated, gaseous, and mineral-dense ecosystems. By examining the symbiotic relationships between organisms and the volcanic vents, scientists can better understand where life began, and the environment in which it started. In order for amino acids to form, the water must be super-heated; at these hydrothermal vents, water temperatures can reach up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, these vents are the perfect organic machines for creating basic life.
I understand not all of you may agree with this theory; and that’s absolutely fine with me. I simply wanted to share an idea I happen to agree with, one that answered many questions for me.
Want to know a bit more? Can’t get enough of the underwater volcanic hot springs? A lot of my information came from the wonderful book Fire Under the Sea by Joseph Cone.
Volcanism 