Lightning Bolts Could Have Delivered The Spark That Started Life on Earth 16 MARCH 2021 The question of how life on Earth got started has long intrigued us, and new research suggests that primordial lightning strikes – perhaps over the course of a billion years – could have played a crucial role in sparking life on this planet.
Central to the idea is the way that lightning bolts create special glasses called fulgurites when they hit the ground. Fulgurites contain phosphorus, one of the key basic ingredients for the formation of life; this ingredient is often locked away inside insoluble rocks. The early Earth may well have experienced enough lightning strikes over a long-enough period to release the necessary amount of reactive phosphorus for life to begin, researchers now think. In fact, the same process could be happening on other planets too.