THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22355, 19 March 1938, Page 21

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

THE origin of life on earth and the forces *that gave rise to it are among the most fascinating of mysteries, a subject of pure speculation for the poetaswellas the scientist. Until recently, it looked very much as if the mysteries would remain forever unsolved. But so rapid have been the advances on the various fronts of knowledge that the impossibilities of yesterday become the promises of to-morrow No less a man than Lord Ruther ford hinted at a possible solution to the mystery of life’s origin in his posthumous address, prepared by him shortly before he di ed > tor the recent science congress in Calcutta, India, over which he was to have presided, , .. The key to the solution is Provided, strangely enough, not by biology or any of the other life sciences, but by the study of the nucleus of the atom. The clue was provided first, though it was not noticed until Lord Rutherford directed attention to it, when science at last succeeded in creating radioactive elements artificially by bombarding them with atomic “bullets,” thus achieving one <af the greatest revolutions in mod- • ern science. This msde it possible to take ordinary substances such as table salt and transform them into radium-like elements, capable of emitting powerful radiations. Now, Lord Rutherford pointed out, the very same conditions for transforming ordinary , stable elements into unstable, radioactive substances, conditions that must be created with gigantic machines in the laboratory, exist on a much larger scale in the sun. In fact, the temperatures and pressures in the interior of the sun are so great that the ordinary elements it contains are constantly being transformed into enormous quantities of radioactive elements that give off enormous quantities of powerful radiations. “No doubt,” Lord Rutherford said, “transient elements are still produced by transmutation in the furnace of our sun, where the thermal

Clue Provided by Lord Rutherford ?

motions of the atoms must be very great. These radioactive elements would rapidly disappear as soon as the earth cooled down after separation from the sun.

“On this view, uranium and thorium are to be regarded as practically the sole survivors in our earth of a large group of radioactive elements, because their time of transformation into stable elements is long compared with the age of the earth.” What has all this to do with the origin of life on earth? For one thing, it shows that the earth, when it became cool enough for life to maintain itself upon its surface, must have been a yeritable ball of radiant energy. Herein lies the first clue to the secret. It is an established scientific fact that certain forms of radiant energy, such as ultra-violet light, are highly favourable to the growth of living substance. Other forms of radiant energy, such as X-rays, have been used experimentally to produce mutations and to create new varieties of plants and insects. It is thus possible that at one period in its evolution from a hot chip of the sun to a cool planet the types of radiant energy emanating on the earth's surface provided just the proper conditions for the emergence of the earliest primordial forms of living matter. Once the initial impetus had been provided, life went its own way. modified by an external environment that kept changing much more radically than it did in later times, including the present. All this stopped when' the earth became a mature, stable planet, with most of its original treasure of radiant energy, inherited from the sun-mother, “spent in riotous living.” Thus, if this hypothesis hinted at by Lord Rutherford is correct, it would explain why no hew forms of life have been found to have arisen on earth during the last 40,000,000 years or so, except, of course, in the evolution of new types out of types already existing, such as the rise of man.

Air No Longer Free The air is no longer free in some parts of England. A number of garagemen have decided to charge 6d every time they have to inflate a motorist’s tyres. This and such other services as filling radiators and topping up batteries are performed free by most filling stations which depend on goodwill for much of their business. But the garagemen say the services cost them several pounds a week in time.