MEETING BRIEFS:
Primordial Soup Researchers Gather at Watering Hole
Ricki Lewis
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK--In a symposium held here earlier this summer, researchers met to discuss the events that could have transformed a lifeless Earth into a rich biochemical broth, able to give rise to the first living organisms. They described experiments suggesting that daily moisture cycles and mineral surfaces could have helped create stable information-carrying polymers, such as RNA, and that sunlight might have driven initial steps in the metabolic cycles that provide energy for life. They also discussed a new technique that could pin down when the meteorite bombardment of early Earth abated, opening the way for life.