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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Life Began Between the Sheets ... of Mica, Expert Says


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An artist's image shows how sheets of the mineral mica may have provided the needed support, shelter, and energy for complex organic molecules such as RNA to form.

The mica sheets are key to a new "soup and sandwich" theory of the origins of life on Earth.

Image by Helen Greenwood Hansma, UCSB