Around 3.7 billion years ago, microbes appeared on Earth (1) and they arose from the interaction between minerals and the surrounding environmental turbulence and temperature fluctuations. From this view, elements and minerals can be considered life forms.
“Inorganic” minerals are not generally acknowledged as life forms, however they comprise the technology of human biology. Carl Sagan said “we are made of star stuff,” because the most abundant elements in the human body, such as Carbon and Nitrogen, also compose the early Universe and first minerals like Diamond and Graphite. This far pre-dates the appearance of humans of course, so in a way the elements are close to the root of our ancestral lineage, as Sagan also said “we are their children.”
How something not alive could give rise to something alive doesn’t exactly compute, but regardless of outlook, there is plenty of evidence that minerals and microbes co-evolved, with a large portion of mineral variety due to microbes.
”Historically, scientists ‘have artificially drawn a line between what is geochemistry and what is biochemistry,’ said Nita Sahai, a biomineralization specialist at the University of Akron in Ohio who was not involved in the new research. In reality, the boundary between animal, vegetable and mineral is much more fluid. Human bodies, for example, are around 2% minerals by weight, most of it locked away in the calcium phosphate scaffolding that reinforces our teeth and bones.” (2)
Then, the evolution of microbial metabolism gave rise to Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere as we know and breathe it. And their exposure to cosmic rays or radiation was another important ingredient in the mixture. (3)
Today’s radiation resistant fungi are being tested on the International Space Station and as part of NASA’s Space Biology program. They exhibit a modern manifestation of an ancient evolutionary trait, that developed to help create an atmosphere in which more complex life could survive. (4)
Now today microbes are once again helping humans, to expand into space — and they also, interestingly, benefit symbiotically by propagating themselves in new environments. And so we return to space, in more intelligent forms.
- https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins#:~:text=With%20an%20environment%20devoid%20of,about%203.7%20billion%20years%20old.
- https://www.quantamagazine.org/life-helps-make-almost-half-of-all-minerals-20220701/
- https://news.stanford.edu/2020/05/20/cosmic-rays-may-shaped-life/
- https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v6.full