Guest Blog by Bob Bruner<\/p>\n

Bob Bruner has attended and presented at\u00a0the scientific conferences described below since 2015.\u00a0 His contribution\u00a0is entitled “Special Exhibit on Meteorites and Minerals associated with the Origin of Life on Earth or Mars” and can be found on the web. He is a long-time member of the Mars\u00a0Society and is a volunteer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. <\/span><\/p>\n

I would like to offer a special THANK YOU to Mr. Bruner for traveling the world to bring us this first hand report and his tireless passion in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Four popular origin of life theories that have influenced the hunt for life on Mars. \u00a0The first are the clay theories which probably started in the late 1950’s with Dr. Bernal of the UK.\u00a0 They were further developed in the 1970’s and 1980’s by Dr. Cairns-Smith of the UK, then in the 1990’s by Dr. Ferris of the USA.\u00a0 They were added to in the 2000’s by Dr. Hashizume\u00a0of Japan and Dr. Hansma of the USA.\u00a0 The theories claim that the structure of clay can provide compartments for proto life to begin, with large molecules like RNA developing later.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The second are the Black Smoker-type hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean theories primarily developed by Dr. Wachtershauser of Germany with an emphasis on\u00a0iron-sulfur and Dr. Mulkidjanian of Germany with an additional emphasis on zinc.\u00a0 These theories claim that the minerals have the ability of powering the chemical reactions that allow small organic molecules to get larger and larger, ultimately becoming proto life.\u00a0 They were popular in the 1980’s and 1990’s.<\/p>\n

The third are the warm hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean theories primarily developed by Dr. Russell of the USA,\u00a0Dr. Sleep of the USA, Dr. Schulte of the USA, and Dr. Holm of Sweden.\u00a0 These theories took off when the Lost City hydrothermal field was discovered by Dr. Kelley of the USA in the 2000’s.\u00a0 The process of serpentinization, where olivine\/pyroxene interacts with CO2 and sea water to produce serpentine, magnetite, brucite, CH4 and H2, gives new\u00a0proto life energy\u00a0and food.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The fourth are the surface hydrothermal pool theories which probably started with Darwin in 1859, but gradually fell out of favor until revived by Dr.\u00a0Deamer and Dr. Damer of the\u00a0USA in 2016.\u00a0 They envision small areas of land above a mostly-ocean Earth\u00a0which contain warm pools interacting with the surrounding environment creating wet-dry cycles which create ever larger organic molecules, ultimately becoming proto life.\u00a0 Opaline silica and geyserite and sinter line hydrothermal pools.<\/p>\n

For many years the clay theories dominated the hunt for life on Mars, not only as proof of water (the existence of clay proves past water) but lately in the case of montmorillonite as a source of food for microbes according to Dr. Craig of the USA.\u00a0 The next hot theory was black smoker-type hydrothermal vents where abundant life forms were spotted by\u00a0expeditions to the bottom of the sea.\u00a0 But some scientists said the hot water would not allow large molecules like RNA to develop.\u00a0 Then came the warm hydrothermal vents where the water was not too hot for large organic molecules to develop. This theory became the most popular theory because life would be protected from\u00a0bad things happening on the surface such as bombardment by asteroids and comets.\u00a0 In fact it was adopted by the Europeans in their roadmap ASTROMAP published in 2015.\u00a0 But in 2016, the\u00a0idea that surface hydrothermal pools provide required wet-dry cycles started to dominate.\u00a0 At the NASA Biosignature Conference in 2016 this idea dominated the conference report so much so that the\u00a0warm hydrothermal vent people asked for a pre-meeting to produce their own report about rock-<\/p>\n

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