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The Genetic Code and the Origin of Life pp 1–14Cite as

The Early Earth

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Abstract

The Earth is so far the only place in the Universe where life is known to exist. Is the Earth special, or are there other places both in our own solar system and beyond where life may have originated and either became extinct or still exists today? Hopefully, in the not to distant future we may find out. During the coming decades, spacecraft will search for evidence of life on Mars and Jupiter s moon Europa, which are considered to be the most promising places for the existence of extant or extinct extraterrestrial life within our solar sys-tem. Using remote sensing techniques, we will also begin to look for signs of life’s chemistry on the extrasolar planets, which seem to be omnipresent companions of many main sequence stars. If the conditions that resulted in the origin of life on Earth are common throughout the Universe, it seems almost certain that life must exist elsewhere. However, to evaluate whether the Earth is a unique place, or simply an average rocky planet around an average star, we must access what the Earth was like before life began and how these conditions contributed to the processes thought to be involved in the origin of life.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California as San Diego, San Diego, California, USA

    Oliver Botta & Jeffrey L. Bada

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  1. Oliver Botta
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  2. Jeffrey L. Bada
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Botta, O., Bada, J.L. (2004). The Early Earth. In: The Genetic Code and the Origin of Life. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-26887-1_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-26887-1_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47843-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-26887-3

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