Fossils on the moon may be our best bet for discovering the origins of life in our solar system. New experiments suggest that if the precursors to life arrived on Earth encased in a comet or asteroid, the moon could have preserved a record of it, despite being covered in lava at the time.
The simplest forms of life appeared on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago, but scientists still have no idea how. Since that crucial time, Earth's tectonic forces have destroyed almost all the rocks that might have kept records of the beginnings of life. "Both geology and life are efficient recyclers and hinder preservation," says Mark Sephton from Imperial College London.
Some think that rather than originating on Earth, life or its organic precursors could have been delivered on asteroids, comets or fragments from other planets. If so, similar rocks should also have hit the moon – which is in better shape to preserve them. "The moon has been geologically quiet for billions of years," says Richard Matthewman of Imperial College London. Furthermore, previous studies have suggested that organic compounds flung to the moon from Earth could survive the crash landing.
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