Deep-Earth carbon offers clues on origin of life: New organic carbon species linked to formation of diamonds — and life itself

New findings by a Johns Hopkins University-led team reveal long unknown details about carbon deep beneath Earth’s surface and suggest ways this subterranean carbon might have influenced the history of life on the planet.

The team also developed a new, related theory about how diamonds form in Earth’s mantle.

For decades scientists have had little understanding of how carbon behaved deep below Earth’s surface even as they learned more and more about the element’s vital role at the planet’s crust. how much carbon and what types exist in fluids at 100 miles below Earth’s surface at temperatures up to 2,100 degrees F.

In an article published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, Sverjensky and his team demonstrate that in addition to the carbon dioxide and methane already documented deep in subduction zones, there exists a rich variety of organic carbon species that could spark the formation of diamonds and perhaps even become food for microbial life.

“It is a very exciting possibility that these deep fluids might transport building blocks for life into the shallow Earth,” said Sverjensky, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “This may be a key to the origin of life itself.”

These high concentrations of dissolved carbon species, previously unknown at great depth in Earth, suggest they are helping to ferry large amounts of carbon from the subduction zone into the overlying mantle wedge where they are likely to alter the mantle and affect the cycling of elements back into Earth’s atmosphere.

The team also suggested that these mantle fluids with dissolved organic carbon species could be creating diamonds in a previously unknown way. Scientists have long believed diamond formation resulted through chemical reactions starting with either carbon dioxide or methane. The organic species offer a range of different starting materials, and an entirely new take on the creation of the gemstones.

Source: Science daily

N.H.khider