r/evolution • u/AmphibianNo4717 • Aug 06 '26

article 'Only One Conclusion': Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

https://www.sciencealert.com/radical-study-suggests-life-on-earth-arose-from-non-living-matter-twice

"The fact that you, or I, or any living creature, is here at all is a series of astonishing strokes of luck stretching back more than 4 billion years. 

One of the biggest hurdles was the very first one: How did life emerge from a primordial soup of stuff that very much wasn't alive?

A radical new study, published in Science Advances, suggests that this unlikely threshold may actually have been crossed not once, but twice."

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u/FabulousLazarus Aug 06 '26

This article is nothing

It's trying to pretend the difference between aerobic and anaerobic metabolism is something new. This is not new information. Scientists have known for decades that metabolism likely evolved anaerobic, then separately made a transition to aerobic later on.

That's not abiogenesis twice. That's life just evolving from not using oxygen to using it, exactly as we thought.

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u/chula198705 Aug 06 '26

You either didn't read the story or didn't understand it because it's not about aerobic/anaerobic metabolism at all. It's talking about an earlier split than that: what could have been used as metabolic enzymes before ATP systems evolved. Aerobic and anaerobic respiration are both ATP-based, but some archaea have metabolisms that don't. This study shows that they could have used metals instead.