Toward a Unified View of Life's Origins: Hydrothermal Vents and Hot Springs Guiding Solar System Exploration

To the point

Two main ideas for how life started—submarine hydrothermal vents and land-based hot springs—are blended to guide the search for life elsewhere, drawing on David Deamer and the collaboration of Alex Longo and Bruce Damer; vents use energy and redox gradients to concentrate organic molecules and form protocells on minerals, while hot springs rely on cycles of wetting and drying to concentrate monomers and select protocells, offering complementary paths for life on different worlds and shaping tests, missions, and the focus on phosphorus and cross-environment transport.