THE role of bubbles in the creation of life on earth is one of the newest approaches to solving the scientific mystery that is probably second in importance only to the problem of how the universe itself began.
No one is suggesting that bubbles might explain everything. But in a new hypothesis receiving close attention, the multitudes of bubbles forming on the surface of the primordial seas must have collected chemicals and concentrated them for synthesis intocomplex molecules.
Eventually, through multi-stage reactions constantly repeated by uncounted generations of bubbles, the molecules grew in size and ambition, ready for the transition to living, reproducing cells.
The bubble hypothesis was described recently by Louis Lerman, a geophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California.
Biologists said the concept seemed sound, was based on well-established physical principles and was certainly worth detailed study.
The earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and the earliest unequivocal fossil evidence of living organisms is dated at 3.5 billion years.
According to Lerman's hypothesis, some time before those fossils the earth was already seeded with prebiotic organic compounds, composed mainly of carbon atoms, which would later be synthesised into the building blocks of living organisms.