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News Release 07-182
Did Life Originate in a Mica Sandwich Sitting in Primordial Soup?
New "soup and sandwich" hypothesis suggests spaces between mica layers may have provided exactly the right conditions for earliest life
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This sketch shows Hansma's hypothesis for the evolution of different types of biological molecules in the many spaces between mica sheets. Image width is ~50 nm.
Credit: Helen Greenwood Hansma, UC Santa Barbara
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Biological molecules tend to bind well to mica. This atomic force microscope [AFM] image shows two yellow molecules on a blue mica surface with a damaged purple-red area on the right, where some of the top [blue] layer of mica peeled off.
Credit: Helen Greenwood Hansma, UC Santa Barbara
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Photo of mica from an abandoned mica mine, with water between some layers, showing edges of mica sheets [e.g., black arrows] and air bubbles in the water [red arrows] and brown bands of organic crud and dirt.
Credit: Helen Greenwood Hansma, UC Santa Barbara
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