Despite a lot of time and effort, scientists still cannot explain how life came to exist on Earth. Some suggest it got its start organically due to unique factors that existed more than 3.5 billion years ago, while others suggest it may have come from an extraterrestrial source.

Researchers have noted that hot material passing through tiny cracks in rocks can undergo filtering, resulting in the isolation of certain molecules. They wondered if such filtering might have happened on early Earth, allowing molecules necessary for life to be exposed.

To find out, they built a chamber in their lab to mimic a volcano.

The team found that the material had been filtered to the extent that 50 kinds of molecules were isolated—some of which would have been an important part of kickstarting life, like nucleotides and amino acids.

The researchers also found differences in filtering based on different temperatures of the molten rock—even minor differences, they found, could lead to isolation of different molecules. They also noted that changing the size of the cracks made a difference as well.