Rosa Rubicondior: Abiogenesis News - How a Deadly Poison Could Have Created Pre-Biotic Organic Molecules

Frozen hydrogen cyanide ‘cobwebs’ offer clues to origin of life - American Chemical Society

Dedicated creationists will need to find yet another way to dismiss new research by three scientists from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Their work shows that, under the right conditions, the deadly poison hydrogen cyanide (HCN) could have provided a medium in which pre-biotic organic molecules accumulated on the early Earth. The findings have been published in the journal ACS Central Science.

The difficulty this presents for creationists arises largely from their habitual black-and-white thinking. Abiogenesis must, in their view, either have occurred via some fully specified, preconceived mechanism or be declared “impossible”. Since the only process they are prepared to accept is supernatural intervention by a magic creator, the conclusion is predetermined: any natural explanation must be rejected out of hand.

That claim, however, is trivially easy to refute. Assertions of impossibility collapse as soon as a single plausible natural mechanism is demonstrated. It is not necessary to establish beyond doubt that a particular hypothetical process is exactly what happened on the early Earth; it is sufficient to show that such a process could have occurred without violating known chemistry or physics.

What the Gothenburg team have demonstrated is that, when frozen, the surfaces of hydrogen cyanide crystals become highly reactive and can catalyse chemical reactions that are not possible at higher temperatures. These reactions could have triggered a cascade of further processes, ultimately producing some of the molecular building blocks of proto-cells.

Nor do pre-biotic chemicals necessarily have to originate on Earth itself. Space is also a viable candidate environment: hydrogen cyanide is abundant in interstellar space, as is water, and the low temperatures required for these crystals to form are commonplace. In the presence of water, HCN can polymerise and give rise to amino acids and nucleobases.

Plausible Mechanisms for Abiogenesis.

Top left: Cosmic dust. Top right: Hydrothermal vents
Bottom left: Self-catalysing RNA. bottom right: RNA world.

Abiogenesis does not require a single, fully defined pathway. Modern origin-of-life research instead identifies multiple chemically plausible mechanisms that could have operated in parallel or sequentially on the early Earth — or even before life reached it.

Pre-biotic Surface Chemistry in Ice
Low temperatures can enable, rather than suppress, chemistry. When frozen, compounds such as hydrogen cyanide form crystalline surfaces that become unusually reactive, catalysing reactions impossible in warmer conditions. This provides a natural route to accumulating complex organic molecules while avoiding rapid degradation.

The RNA World Hypothesis
RNA can both store genetic information and catalyse chemical reactions. Laboratory studies show that nucleotides and short RNA strands can form under plausible pre-biotic conditions, supporting a scenario in which self-replicating RNA preceded DNA and proteins.

Hydrothermal Vent Chemistry
Alkaline hydrothermal vents provide:

natural proton gradients,
catalytic mineral surfaces (iron–sulphur compounds),
compartmentalised micro-environments.

These conditions closely resemble the energy systems used by modern cells, making vents a strong candidate for early metabolic pathways.

Atmospheric and Electrical Chemistry
Early Earth’s atmosphere, combined with ultraviolet radiation and lightning, can drive the synthesis of amino acids, sugars, and other organic molecules. Classic experiments have since been refined using more realistic atmospheric compositions, with consistent success.

Extraterrestrial Delivery
Organic molecules, including amino acids and nucleobases, are found in meteorites, comets, and interstellar clouds. Earth formed within this chemically rich environment, meaning pre-biotic compounds may have arrived already partially assembled.

Self-Assembly and Protocells
Fatty acids spontaneously form membrane-like vesicles in water. These protocells can:

encapsulate nucleic acids,
grow and divide,
create protected chemical environments.

This bridges the gap between chemistry and biology without invoking design.

Why This Matters
Abiogenesis does not require proof of exactly which pathway occurred. Demonstrating that multiple natural mechanisms are chemically viable is sufficient to dismantle claims that life “could not possibly arise” without supernatural intervention.

In science, plausibility refutes impossibility.

The experimental methods used by the team, and the reasoning behind them, are outlined in an accompanying American Chemical Society news release.

Frozen hydrogen cyanide ‘cobwebs’ offer clues to origin of life
A substance poisonous to humans — hydrogen cyanide — may have helped create the seeds of life on Earth. At cold temperatures, hydrogen cyanide forms crystals. And, according to computer models reported in ACS Central Science, some of the facets on these crystals are highly reactive, enabling chemical reactions that are otherwise not possible at low temperatures. The researchers say these reactions could have started a cascade that gave rise to several building blocks of life.

In cold environments, hydrogen cyanide forms solid crystals, which computer simulations predict have multifaceted tips that attract other crystals to form the cobweb-like structures scientists observe in experiments.

Adapted from ACS Central Science 2026, DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.5c01497

We may never know precisely how life began, but understanding how some of its ingredients take shape is within reach. Hydrogen cyanide is likely one source of this chemical complexity, and we show that it can react surprisingly quickly in cold places.

Martin Rahm, corresponding author.
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Chalmers University of Technology
Gothenburg, Sweden.

Hydrogen cyanide is abundant in many environments beyond Earth, including on comets and the atmosphere of planets and moons (e.g., Saturn’s moon Titan). Additionally, when combined with water, hydrogen cyanide can form polymers, amino acids and nucleobases (components of proteins and DNA strands, respectively). To further examine its chemical reactivity, Marco Capelletti, Hilda Sandström and Martin Rahm conducted computer simulations of frozen hydrogen cyanide.

The researchers simulated a stable hydrogen cyanide crystal as a 450-nanometer-long cylinder with a rounded base and a multifaceted top shaped like a cut gemstone. They say this shape matches prior observations of crystal “cobwebs” branching out from a central point, where the multifaceted ends come together.

Calculations revealed that the crystals have the potential to trigger chemical reactions that don’t usually occur in extreme-cold environments. Using the chemical properties of the crystal surface, the researchers identified two pathways that could convert hydrogen cyanide into the more-reactive hydrogen isocyanide within minutes to days, depending on the temperature. They say that the presence of hydrogen isocyanide at the crystals’ surface suggests that other, more complex prebiotic precursors could form there.

The team now hopes that other scientists will follow up on these predictions by performing experiments, in which hydrogen cyanide crystals are crushed in the presence of substances like water, to see if the exposed crystal surfaces can indeed encourage the production of complex molecules at extremely cold temperatures.

Publication:
Cappelletti, Marco; Sandström, Hilda; Rahm, Martin
Electric Fields Can Assist Prebiotic Reactivity on Hydrogen Cyanide Surfaces
ACS Central Science 2026; doi: 10.1021/acscentsci.5c01497

Abstract

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is present in many astrochemical environments, including interstellar clouds and comets. On Saturn’s moon Titan, large amounts of HCN ice are present in the atmosphere and, following surface deposition, may influence both chemical and geological evolution. However, despite HCN’s relevance to origin of life chemistry, the physiochemical properties of its solid state remain poorly characterized. For example, the crystals of HCN exhibit a range of rare properties, including pyroelectricity, and the ability to glow and jump under certain conditions. Here we use quantum chemical methods to predict HCN crystal surface energies, from which we derive the needle-like, high-aspect-ratio morphology of HCN nanocrystals. The predicted tips expose high-energy polar facets imbued with strong electric fields. We suggest that the combination of tips of opposite polarity helps to explain the cobweb-structure of solid HCN, and that fracture can transiently expose energetic surfaces, capable of catalysis at low temperature. One such process is predicted to be the near-barrierless formation of isocyanide (HNC) on HCN crystals, following proton addition or abstraction, for example, via radiation or acid/base-chemistry. Such field-assisted surface mechanisms may contribute to HCN-to-HNC isomerization under relevant conditions, and are suggested to explain part of the out-of-equilibrium abundance of HNC in cold environments such as Titan’s atmosphere, and, potentially, in cometary comae.

Cappelletti, Marco; Sandström, Hilda; Rahm, Martin
Electric Fields Can Assist Prebiotic Reactivity on Hydrogen Cyanide Surfaces
ACS Central Science 2026; doi: 10.1021/acscentsci.5c01497

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by American Chemical Society. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This research further erodes one of creationism’s most frequently recycled talking points: that life could not possibly have arisen through natural processes. Each time a new, chemically plausible mechanism is identified, the scope for invoking “impossibility” shrinks a little more. What once relied on ignorance and hand-waving increasingly looks like an argument sustained only by refusal to engage with the evidence.

The key point creationists consistently miss is that science does not need to reconstruct the exact, step-by-step pathway by which life emerged. It only needs to show that life *could* arise under known physical and chemical laws. Demonstrating plausibility is sufficient to invalidate claims that abiogenesis is ruled out in principle — and that bar has now been cleared many times over, by multiple independent lines of research.

As with cosmology, geology, and biological evolution more broadly, abiogenesis research reveals a natural world that is richer, more subtle, and more creative than any simplistic supernatural shortcut. The question is no longer whether chemistry can bridge the gap to biology, but how many different ways it might have done so — on Earth, or elsewhere — over the vast reaches of deep time.

For those committed to evidence-based explanations, that is an exciting scientific challenge. For those committed to a predetermined conclusion, it is simply more inconvenient data to be ignored.

The sticking point for creationists is that they have been conditioned to imagine that 'life' is something that exists in its own right, but whenever asked to explain what exactly they imagine 'life' is - a substance, a process or something else - they invariably cry foul and make a hurried exit, often muttering threats and hurling curses over their departing shoulder, determined as they are to never allow the toxic trio of evidence, logic and reason have any bearing on their opinions.

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