From Lab to Life: Life Began with Hydrogen

How, when and where did life on Earth begin?  There are a number of theories – but all involve the formation of water, in which living cells were born.

OK – so, where did water come from?   Hmmm.   From, uh, comets?  Ice from asteroids?

I think scientists have now come up with a definitive answer. Not comets. Water – H₂O, came from hydrogen.  Hydrogen came from the Earth’s molten core, when volcanic eruptions created land and magma spewed out from the molten iron core of the Earth.  And hydrogen combined with oxygen, to form water –   huge seas and oceans of it.  [The oxygen came from cyanobacteria, which through evolution figured out how to use sunlight to smash CO₂ into carbon and oxygen.]

This idea was explained clearly by Anat Shahar, interviewed by Ira Flatow on the Science Friday podcast.  She is an American scientist, Israeli-born,  at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C.   She spoke at length about new research published in January in Nature Communications. *

*Huang, D., Murakami, M., Gerstl, S., & Liebske, C. (2026). Experimental quantification of hydrogen content in the Earth’s core. Nature Communications, 17(1), 1211.

Scientists from China and Switzerland carried out a simulation of the earth’s core – “observation of hydrogen at silicon- and oxygen-rich nanostructures in iron alloy”.  Hydrogen, they note, LOVES to merge with iron…and anything else.  And there is a whole lot of it inside the Earth – enough to generate “9 to 45 oceans of water”.  Conclusion: the Earth has obtained “the majority of its water from the main stages of terrestrial accretion”.  I.e., volcanic eruption that created land masses. Hydrogen spewed out, and oxidized (combined with oxygen) to water.  Creating enormous seas.  In which life formed.

But there is another huge conclusion in this research. One that could save the planet, and not just explain how it got its water and its life.

Hydrogen is a pure, clean ‘fuel’.  When it burns, i.e. oxidizes, it generates.water.  Not greenhouse gases, not  CO₂  , water! Life-giving water.  One day our cars and trucks and trains and buses will run on hydrogen – and many already do, today.  Hydrogen today powers vehicles through a) hydrogen fuel cells, and b) hydrogen combustion engines.

Hydrogen generated water, a key precondition for life on Earth. Now, maybe hydrogen will make life on Earth sustainable.