It is generally recognized that the evolution of the early Earth was affected by an external energy source: radiation from the early Sun. The hypothesis about the important role of natural radioactivity, as a source of internal energy in the evolution of the early Earth, is considered and substantiated in this work. The decay of the long-lived isotopes ²³²Th, ²³⁸U, ²³⁵U, and ⁴⁰K in the Global Ocean initiated the oxygenation of the hydro- and atmosphere, and the abiogenesis. The content of isotopes in the ocean and the kinetics of their decay, the values of the absorbed dose and dose rate, and the efficiency of sea water radiolysis, as a function of time, were calculated. The ocean served as both a "<b><i>reservoir</i></b>" that collected components of the early atmosphere and products of their transformations, and a "<b><i>converter</i></b>" in which further chemical reactions of these compounds took place. Radical mechanisms were proposed for the formation of simple amino acids, sugars, and nitrogen bases, i.e., the key structures of all living things, and also for the formation of oxygen. The calculation results confirm the possible important role of natural radioactivity in the evolution of terrestrial matter, and the emergence of life.

The origin of life on Earth remains one of the most perplexing challenges in biochemistry. While numerous bottom-up experiments under prebiotic conditions have provided valuable insights into the spontaneous chemical genesis of life, there remains a significant gap in the theoretical understanding of the complex reaction processes involved. In this study, we propose a novel approach using a roto-translationally invariant potential (RTIP) formulated with pristine Cartesian coordinates to facilitate the simulation of chemical reactions. By employing RTIP pathway sampling to explore the reactivity of primitive molecules, we identified several low-energy reaction mechanisms, such as two-hydrogen-transfer hydrogenation and HCOOH-catalyzed hydration and amination. This led to the construction of a comprehensive reaction network, illustrating the synthesis pathways for glycine, serine, and alanine. Further thermodynamic analysis highlights the pivotal role of formaldimine as a key precursor in amino acid synthesis, owing to its more favorable reactivity in coupling reactions compared to the traditionally recognized hydrogen cyanide. Our study demonstrates that the RTIP methodology, coupled with a divide-and-conquer strategy, provides new insights into the simulation of complex reaction processes, offering promising applications for advancing organic design and synthesis.

Traditional prebiotic chemistry experiments often isolated single reactions under clean, controlled conditions, yet early Earth was chemically diverse and physically dynamic. Such primordial complexity likely imposed obstacles, including side reactions, low yields, and unstable intermediates, but it also generated opportunities, including redundant routes, parallel pathways, and environmental filters that could bias mixtures toward subsets of persistent and chemically productive compounds. This review examines how heterogeneous prebiotic settings could generate RNA precursors, including nucleobases, ribose, and phosphate-containing species, through multiple concurrent pathways. Although side reactions can sequester carbon in inert tars and reduce yields of specific targets, networked chemistry can also enhance robustness when different routes converge on shared intermediates, or when apparent byproducts reenter productive cycles. Environmental factors such as ultraviolet irradiation, mineral surfaces, wet-dry cycling, and thermal gradients can act as constraints that enrich certain products by differential stability, reactivity, and compartmentalization. In this context, the RNA world hypothesis remains compelling, as RNA can store heritable sequence information and catalyze reactions through sequence dependent folding, thereby linking heredity and chemistry within a single polymer. At the same time, the emergence of functional sequence information and of control architectures that couple sequence to reproducible function remains a central open problem, and it sets clear limits on what chemistry alone can explain. Rather than dismissing messy mixtures as irrelevant noise, it is more accurate to treat them as the native context in which concentration mechanisms, environmental cycling, and selective persistence could enable the accumulation and survival of RNA related molecules.

The Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments (PCE 3 ) Consortium is a community of researchers seeking to understand the origins of life on Earth and in the universe. PCE 3 is one of five Research Coordination Networks (RCNs) within NASA’s Astrobiology Program. Here we report on the inaugural PCE 3 workshop, intended to cross-pollinate, transfer information, promote cooperation, break down disciplinary barriers, identify new directions, and foster collaborations. This workshop, entitled, “ Building a New Foundation” , was designed to propagate current knowledge, identify possibilities for multidisciplinary collaboration, and ultimately define paths for future collaborations. Presentations addressed the likely conditions on early Earth in ways that could be incorporated into prebiotic chemistry experiments and conceptual models to improve their plausibility and accuracy. Additionally, the discussions that followed among workshop participants helped to identify within each subdiscipline particularly impactful new research directions. At its core, the foundational knowledge base presented in this workshop should underpin future workshops and enable collaborations that bridge the many disciplines that are part of PCE 3 .

Cytosine is an essential chemical molecule in living systems, such as DNA and RNA, it is essential in astrobiology to study how it behaves under probable primitive conditions. We looked at how cytosine broke down in aqueous solutions exposed to high radiation levels to learn more about how stable it might have been on the early Earth. We conducted various types of analysis, such as ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy and high-pressure liquid chromatography. We also developed a computer model to describe the kinetic processes and learn more about the molecules involved in the system. This model fits the results of experiments and lets us study cytosine's stability when it is exposed to gamma radiation. It enables researchers to theorize processes that are hard to test in the laboratory and is essential for studying how stable cytosine behaves in high-radiation settings.

fields, laboratory, and numerical modeling methods to decipher Earth history and to understand the processes that occur on and inside the Earth. In typical Geology is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical bodies, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. The name comes from Ancient Greek γῆ (gê) 'earth' and λoγία (-logía) 'study of, discourse'. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth sciences, including hydrology. It is integrated with Earth system sci Seismologists can use the arrival times of seismic waves to image the interior of the Earth. Early advances in this field showed the existence of a liquid outer core (where shear waves were not… Ge… In addition to identifying rocks in the field (lithology), petrologists identify rock samples in the laboratory. Two of the primary methods for identifying rocks in the laboratory are through optical microscopy (such as with the petrographic microscope) and by using an electron microprobe. In an optical mineralogy analysis, petrologists analyze thin sections of rock samples using a petrographic microscope, where the minerals can be identified through their different properties in plane-polarized and cross-polarized light, including their birefringence, pleochroism, twinning, and interference properties with a conoscopic lens. In the electron microprobe, individual locations are analyzed for their exact chemical compositions and variation in composition within individual crystals. Stable and radioactive isotope studies provide insight into the geochemical evolution of rock units. Petrologists can use fluid inclusion data and perform high temperature and pressure physical experiments to understand the temperatures and pressures at which different mineral phases appear, and how they change through igneous and metamorphic processes. This research can be extrapolated to the field to understand metamorphic processes and the conditions of crystallization of igneous rocks. This work can help to explain processes that occur within the Earth, such as subduction and magma chamber evolution.

essential first step. Experiments that simulated the conditions of the early Earth have reported the formation of lipids, and these can spontaneously The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the process It has been suggested that double-walled "bubbles" of lipids like those that form the external membranes of cells may have been an essential first step. Experiments that simulated the conditions of the early Earth have reported the formation of lipids, and these can spontaneously form liposomes, double-walled "bubbles", and then reproduce themselves. Although they are not intrinsically information-carriers as nucleic acids are, they would be subject to natural selection for longevity and reproduction. Nucleic acids such as RNA might then have formed more easily within the liposomes than outside.

Habitability of rocky planets relies on the budgets of life-essential elements (LEEs) in their building blocks. The provenance and geochemistry of the planetesimals that supplied the LEEs to Earth remain debated. Traditional models argue LEE delivery via outer Solar System chondrites, but their 2 to 4 million-year (Myr) accretion ages preclude them as the first feedstock. To investigate the initial LEE distribution, we reconstructed the phosphorus-nitrogen (P-N) budget of the iron meteorite parent bodies (IMPBs), which accreted <1 Myr of Solar System formation. High-pressure-temperature experiments of P-N partitioning between solid and liquid alloys combined with geochemical models reveal higher P/N ratios in outer Solar System IMPBs than in inner ones-a trend reversed in chondrites. This evolution reflects early refractory schreibersite delivery to the outer disk, later curtailed by Jupiter's growth. Further modeling in combination with previous elemental and isotopic data on volatile LEEs suggests that both early and later inner Solar System planetesimals are chief contributors to Earth's LEE inventory.