Liquid Crystals and the Origin of Life
Prior to the evolution of the first living things the world was made of crystals, liquids and gasses. Life’s beginnings must have involved the transition of matter from these states to one of liquid crystallinity.
Some important events in the origin of life on Earth probably include the concentration of carbon, the formation of complex organic molecules, sorting of those molecules into chiral types, the evolution of sustained loops of chemical interactions, formation of a replicator, a coupling of this chemistry and replication to an energy source, the origination of liquid crystallinity, and possibly a transition from indistinct networks of living material into relatively individual, self-contained entities or cells. This story concerns some of the possible scenarios for the concentration of carbon and, particularly, in the words of Robert Hazen (2001), how life was first “crafted from air, water and rock,” or, implicitly, from gaseous, liquid and crystalline matter.
Carbon concentration may have happened through repeated flooding of pools along the shores of early oceans, presumably by the action of the tides. These pools would have been flooded with water containing low concentrations of soluble carbon…
