A venting black smoker emits jets of particle-laden fluids. The particles are predominantly very fine-grained sulfide minerals formed when the hot hydrothermal fluids mix with near-freezing seawater. These minerals solidify as they cool, forming chimney-like structures. “Black smokers” are chimneys formed from deposits of iron sulfide, which is black. “White smokers” are chimneys formed from deposits of barium, calcium, and silicon, which are white.
Source: National Ocean Service.
A favourite disingenuous creationist tactic is to keep challenging science to achieve something that seems impossible—such as replicating the conditions of a deep ocean thermal vent to demonstrate that this could have been where life began. The trap is then to either gloat over science’s failure or to shift the goalposts and proclaim that any success merely proves that intelligence is required to create life.
So, we can almost guarantee that the news that a team of scientists at Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) in São Paulo, Brazil, have replicated not the thermal vents themselves but the chemical reactions believed to have occurred within them—and shown that these reactions do indeed produce the precursors of living systems—will be presented by creationists as supposed proof of the role of intelligence in the process.
The fallacy, of course, is that a laboratory experiment merely establishes the conditions under which natural forces can operate. By contrast, intelligent design advocates insist that an intelligent entity, working to a plan, must actively direct those natural forces to make chemistry and physics do something they supposedly couldn’t do on their own. Such is the intellectual dishonesty of many creationists that this distinction is either too subtle for them to grasp—or they deliberately ignore it.
How Life Could Have Begun in a Hydrothermal Vent.How the São Paulo team created these conditions and what they discovered is detailed in a paper published last July in the *Journal of the American Chemical Society* and in a news article by José Tadeu Arantes for Agência FAPESP.
Diagram of a Hydrothermal Vent System
- Chemical Building Blocks Formed
In hydrothermal vents, hot, mineral-rich fluids mix with cold seawater. This creates steep temperature and chemical gradients. These conditions can drive simple molecules like carbon dioxide, hydrogen, methane, and ammonia to react and form organic compounds such as amino acids, nucleotides, and lipids.- Natural Energy Sources
Vents provide continuous sources of chemical energy (e.g., from hydrogen and sulphides) that can power reactions without sunlight. These energy flows mimic the kind of metabolic processes seen in some modern microbes.- Concentration in Micropores
The porous structure of vent chimneys can act like natural reaction vessels. Organic molecules are trapped and concentrated within these tiny chambers, increasing the likelihood of complex chemical interactions and polymer formation.- Self-Organising Systems
Once polymers such as peptides or RNA-like molecules appear, cycles of reaction and selection could favour more stable and self-replicating systems, gradually leading to primitive metabolic networks.- Emergence of Protocells
Fatty molecules could spontaneously form membrane-like structures around these chemical systems, creating protocells. These provide a stable internal environment, allowing further complexity to evolve — eventually leading to the first true living cells.
Underwater thermal vents may have given rise to the first molecular precursors of life
To test the hypothesis, researchers from Brazil, the United States, and Japan built bench-scale reactors that simulate the interaction between hydrothermal fluids and primitive ocean water.
By José Tadeu Arantes | Agência FAPESP
A study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society recreated in the laboratory chemical reactions that may have occurred on Earth about 4 billion years ago, producing the first molecular precursors for the emergence of life. The experiment showed that, without the presence of enzymes, natural gradients of pH, redox potential, and temperature present in underwater hydrothermal vents could have promoted the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to formic acid (CH₂O₂) and the subsequent formation of acetic acid (C₂H₄O₂). Redox potential is a measure of the tendency of a substance to gain or lose electrons in an oxidation-reduction reaction. The results confirmed the hypothesis that underwater hydrothermal vents played a key role in the process.
The hypothesis is that these physical-chemical contrasts present in the vicinity of the thermal vents generate a natural voltage, as occurs between the inside and outside of the mitochondria. It’s this voltage that sustains the chemical reactions.
Dr. Thiago Altair Ferreira, first author
Sao Carlos Institute of Chemistry
University of Sao Paulo
Sao Carlos, Brazil.
Ferreira holds a PhD in science from the Department of Physical Chemistry at the São Carlos Institute of Chemistry at the University of São Paulo (IQSC-USP) in Brazil and is currently a researcher at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) in Wako, Japan.
Alkaline hydrothermal vents release hot fluids (typically around 70 °C) that are basic (with a pH between 9 and 12) and rich in molecular hydrogen (H₂). These fluids mix with the colder water (around 5 °C) from the primitive ocean, which is slightly acidic (pH around 5.5). In these environments, mineral walls rich in micropores and capable of conducting electrons form from iron and nickel sulfides. The contrast generates natural gradients analogous to those that sustain cellular metabolism today.
In the Hadean, there would have been a colder, more acidic ocean and, emanating from hydrothermal vents, a hot, alkaline fluid. That alone would have produced a certain voltage, comparable to what we know exists in cellular processes today. Our experiment sought to determine whether this voltage alone could trigger a carbon fixation reaction. And we found that it could.
Dr. Thiago Altair Ferreira
The Hadean is the oldest eon in Earth’s history. A geological eon is the largest unit of time on the geological scale. It can last from hundreds of millions to billions of years and is subdivided into geological eras. The Hadean corresponds to the period from approximately 4.6 billion years ago, when the planet formed, to about 4 billion years ago, when the next eon, the Archean, began.
To test the hypothesis, the researchers built bench-scale reactors that simulate the interaction between hydrothermal fluids and primitive ocean water. These reactors have independent controls for temperature, mineral composition, and the passage of electrical currents, whether spontaneous or induced. Iron-sulfur (Fe-S) minerals and their nickel-containing variants (Fe-Ni-S) were used as mineralogical mediators of the process. “Iron-sulfur and iron-nickel-sulfur minerals are very similar to the metal centers we see today in various enzymes. This allows us to consider protometabolism – a metabolism without enzymes – as the trigger for the process,” Ferreira says.
In the experiments, micromolar concentrations of formic acid and acetic acid were detected on the “oceanic” side of the reactor under pH gradients and in the presence of Fe-S or Fe-Ni-S. This indicates coupling between H₂ oxidation on the “hydrothermal” side and CO₂ reduction on the “oceanic” side through the conductive mineral barrier. These are the first two steps of the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway.
Named after American biochemist Harland Wood (1907-1991) and Swedish biochemist Lars Ljungdahl (1926-2023), this pathway is a metabolic route for carbon fixation that uses hydrogen as an electron donor. In this pathway, methanogenic and acetogenic bacteria convert CO₂ into acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA), which has phosphate bonds that can store considerable amounts of energy, similar to those in adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is the main molecule responsible for energy storage and transport in all living cells. The Wood-Ljungdahl pathway is considered one of the oldest biochemical pathways on Earth and was possibly active as early as the Hadean eon.
We focused on two products: formic acid and acetic acid. The first step – converting CO₂ into formic acid and then into acetic acid – is the limiting factor in the process, the most difficult part in terms of energy. We solved it using only minerals,
Dr. Thiago Altair Ferreira
The study also examined the role of electric currents and found that tiny currents, on the order of nanoamperes (10⁻⁹ A), were enough to efficiently reduce CO₂. “This suggests that very small but constant electric currents at the bottom of the primitive sea would be enough to sustain a protometabolism,” Ferreira comments.
The results of the study reinforce the role of alkaline hydrothermal vents on primitive Earth, showing that two protometabolic stages can emerge from natural gradients and mineral surfaces without the need for complex biological machinery. “The initial condition for life is not a ‘soup’ of organic molecules, but order in the right place and at the right time, maintained by exchanges of energy and entropy. We worked on the logic of physical-chemical gradients triggering reactions in the presence of mineral surfaces that resemble the active sites of enzymes,” Ferreira summarizes.
Although the study focused on basic science with possible astrobiological applications (proposing scenarios for oceanic environments on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus), the approach also inspires technological applications. “Given the importance of metal sites analogous to those of enzymes, we can conceive of more stable and effective materials and conditions for electrocatalysis and hydrogen production, which is currently a major focus as a sustainable energy alternative, as well as for reducing atmospheric CO2, which is a fundamental problem in the context of climate change,” Ferreira suggests.
The study brought together researchers from Brazil, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Among them was Professor Hamilton Varela, Ferreira’s doctoral advisor.
The work, developed by Ferreira during his doctoral studies and then refined during his postdoctoral studies, provided experimental evidence of the role of temperature, pH, and potential gradients in CO₂ reduction and opened up important perspectives in the field. This study was developed as part of a Thematic Project of the Electrochemistry Group at IQSC-USP and corroborates the transdisciplinary aspect of electrocatalysis and the importance of basic research.
Professor Hamilton Varela, co-author
Sao Carlos Institute of Chemistry
University of Sao Paulo
Sao Carlos, Brazil.
The study also received support from FAPESP through a research internship abroad.
Publication:
This research does not claim to prove that the first self-replicating systems evolved in hydrothermal vents, but it does demonstrate that such a scenario is entirely plausible. It directly undermines the creationist assertion that life cannot emerge from inorganic chemistry without divine intervention and some undefined “magical ingredient” called life to distinguish the living from the non-living.Abstract
Energy metabolism at the emergence of life has been the topic of intense theoretical and experimental study. Alkaline hydrothermal vents (AHVs) may have facilitated energy transfer and carbon fixation at life’s emergence. Specifically, pH separation across vent walls could have been the forerunner to pH separation across cell membranes, with inorganic barriers containing [Ni-]FeS minerals as precursors of metalloenzymes in potentially ancient biological reductive acetyl-CoA Wood–Ljungdahl (WL) and other metabolic pathways. We previously demonstrated pH-gradient-dependent reduction of CO2 to formate by H2 in AHV interface conditions. Here, we address the same problem of CO2 reduction using a macroscale reactor with minerals synthesized via protocols meant to mimic the natural processes of hydrothermal chimney formation. This reactor also allowed us to probe more variables and explore longer experimentation time frames. These results elucidate how different aspects of the hydrothermal–vent interface (e.g., different minerals and/or temperature gradients) affect the observed CO2 electrochemical reduction as well as the flow of electrons under passive vs induced currents and potentials. Using experimental simulations and electrochemistry techniques, we detected two key steps of the WL pathway (CO2 to formic acid and the formation of acetic acid). We explored effects of Ni incorporation in the mineral catalyst, as well as temperature and the effects of these variables on the production of formate. Currents as small as 10 nanoamps to 10 microamps were enough to efficiently carry out CO2 reduction. In this work, we electrochemically explore energy protometabolism in vent–ocean interfaces, specifically focusing on [Ni-]FeS minerals as precursors of metalloenzymes.
Altair, T.; Dragoti, E.; Sojo, V.; Li, Y.; Skiffington, S.; Sullivan, W.A.; Drozd, G.T.; McGlynn, S.E.; Galante, D.; Varela, H.; Hudson, R.
Carbon Reduction Powered by Natural Electrochemical Gradients under Submarine Hydrothermal Vent Conditions
Journal of the American Chemical Society (2025) 147(32); DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5c01948
© 2025 The authors. Published by American Chemical Society.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Creationists routinely invoke this supposed “law” that life can’t come from non-life, yet consistently avoid defining or explaining whether this life is meant to be a substance, a process, or something else entirely. In reality, such claims amount to little more than the chanting of a protective mantra—repeated with no more understanding than a parrot has of the words it squawks.
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