Mary Anning, early paleontologist and fossil hunter

The United Kingdom is a treasure trove of fossils, from dinosaurs to shellfish. The Enlightenment period (late 1600s and the early 1800s) brought with it a sense of importance to empirical observations, but also to classifying and organizing things. When the Industrial Revolution took place in the late 1700s to early 1800s, land became exposed to make railroads, quarries, tunnels, and canals. These actions created great opportunities for fossil hunters.

Map of fossil sites in the UK (left, Premier Inn); location of the best site, Lyme Regis

The Latin, and later French, origins of the word fossil were very general: something dug up. The word didn't have any more meaning than that, and so people spoke of curious rocks, crystals, teeth, shells, bones, and petrified plants and sea life. But fossil held only that meaning, with no early connection to what are known today as fossils--remains or impression of a prehistoric plant or animal embedded in rock and preserved. The word had to earn its current meaning through decades of learning.

In the 1500s, fossils were considered to come from "sports of nature" or Noah's flood. They were considered curiosities of rock, not biological origins.

In the 1660s–1670s, Danish scientist Nicholas Steno not only showed that triangular rocks called "tongue stones" were actually ancient preserved shark teeth, and he proposed three principles of geology that remain in use today:

• sediment layers are deposited flat
• the oldest layers are at the bottom, youngest at the top
• layers extend outward until they thin out or are cut off

Steno's drawing of a shark head and teeth, and a photo of a tongue stone (evolution.berkeley.edu)

The idea that fossil shells and other samples were actually biological remains and not simply rock curiosities grew into the 1700s. The age of the Earth was challenged with more geological findings, and a biblical age was being replaced with evidence to show that it was formed with long-term, slow, continuous processes that would tend to favor the slow formation of fossils. Scientists and private collectors were starting to notice that certain types of fossils were consistently found in particular rock layers, but they didn’t yet have a systematic method for using this information to understand Earth’s history. They instead just thought fossils were found in limestone and sandstone but wouldn’t systematically link them to the order that the sediments were deposited or use them to guess the relative ages of layers. (Dating of rocks with radioactive elements didn't start until 1907 by Bertram Boltwood.) Fossils were noted, collected, and described, but rarely mapped or correlated across regions of the UK and Europe.

Enter Richard Anning and his wife Molly. 

Richard was a cabinet maker and carpenter who moved to the county of Dorset in southern England ini 1793. They settled in a new resort town of Lyme Regis (population 1,250 then) that had been made accessible to wheeled vehicles by a new road in 1758 to boost the area's economy. People began to travel there and other coastal areas when doctors began to talk about therapeutic effects of ocean air, bathing in saltwater, and even drinking it.

Lyme Regis port in 1724 (Lyme Regis Museum)

Lyme Regis was in the center of a rocky coast containing beaches and high cliffs from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, a distance of about 154 km (96 miles). This stretch of coastline was named Jurassic Coast in the 2000s for reasons that will become apparent. It is England's only World Heritage Site.

The Jurassic Coast (Photos from Wikipedia)

They had 10 children, but only the last two survived poor health conditions and a fire. The last was Mary Anning, born on May 21, 1799.  Her father supplemented his income by collecting fossils from the coast to tourists, and his charismatic nature made him quite popular with high class collectors. Since two busy roads passed right in front of their coastal home, it wasn't hard to set up a table and attract their business.

Richard died after an accident in 1810 at 44, when Mary was only 11, but not before teaching her and her brother Joseph something about finding, excavating, and polishing fossils in the area. She was on the beaches at age 5 helping him out.

Mary with her father Richard (from The Fossil Hunter, by Shelley Emling)

The coast has much exposed blue lias, a series of layers of limestone and shale laid down from the late Triassic and early Jurassic times, (195-200 million years ago). Quarries during Mary's time had exposed rocky formations inland what the ocean waves hadn't from the cliffs, and lias was used not just for building blocks but also for the lime content for making mortar. 

(left) Limestone cliff and pavement along the Jurassic Coast (Alamy).

(right) A couple in 1909 on the Blue Lias beach area taking in the sea air. (fossilguy.com)

During the Jurassic period, most of England was underwater, and its future land was being populated by sea creatures that turned into fossils. This explains why the blue lias was also very rich in fossils like ammonites, members of the mollusk family from 140 million years ago. These were common fossils sought by collectors. 

Fossil of the ammonite Astroceras from England (Wikipedia)

With her father having passed away, Mary tried to continue his hobby of providing fossils so the family could make money. This was the time of the Napoleonic Wars, and there were food shortages in England along with rising prices. Richard had owed 120 pounds (about 12,000 pounds equivalent today, about $16,255 USD and  ¥2,389,600 JPY), and the family still needed to pay rent.

In 1811, when Mary was 12, her brother found something tremendous on the coastal cliffs. It was a 1.2-meter (4-foot) long skull of an ichthyosaurus, a marine reptile with the narrow head like a crocodile. Mary spent several months digging further to uncover the rest of the body's skeleton by 1812. 

Mary working on the ichthyosaur (Image from Arthur Mee’s “The Children’s Encyclopedia”. 1925)

They sold it to a collector for 23 pounds. It was later sold again and labeled "Crocodile in a fossil state". Sir Everard Home of the Royal Society of London published a paper on it, but never mentioned Mary or Joseph.

Ichthyosaur found by Mary Anning (Natural History Museum); drawing of the creature when alive (Britannica)

In the next decade, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Birch became one of Mary's best fossil customers. In May 1820, he was so taken with the diligence of their fossil hunting and their poverty that he sold his entire collection and donated about 400 pounds to the Annings, making sure to announce who had found the fossils. 

Around that time, many professional naturalists were having difficulty sorting out what types of animals these fossils were, often from only fragments of their bodies. Joseph had started working as an upholsterer's apprentice to bring in more money, but Mary continued fossil hunting. Then, she made another discovery in 1823: a plesiosaur. This is a long-necked marine reptile resembling a sea serpent in modern language. Until much later identification, many thought it was merely a turtle with a long neck.

Mary's sketch & notes of her plesiosaur (Natural History Museum); the actual fossil she found (Wikipedia)

Georges Cuvier, a renowned expert in the field of paleontology, thought it was a fake until he saw it for himself. From then on, she became famous, and many people came to Lyme Regis just to seek her out for advice. However, despite being a recognized expert, the male-dominated scientific community refused to list her in their own findings. For example, despite being recognized through Europe as a great fossil hunter, a personal letter of hers was labeled by the British Museum as “lacking importance”. One exception was George Cumberland, a famous art collector. In 1823, upon displaying a new ichthyosaur that Mary had uncovered, he wrote of her specifically in a newspaper (using a local dialect which misspelled her name):

the very finest specimen of a Fossil Ichthyosaurus ever found in Europe, a specimen that sets at rest all further investigation...of that remarkable aquatic animal, which we owe intirely to the persevering industry of a young female fossilist, of the name of Hanning [sic] of Lyme in Dorsetshire, and her dangerous employment.

He then described the dangers. 

This persevering female has for years gone daily in search of fossil remains of importance at every tide, for many miles under the hanging cliffs at Lyme, whose fallen masses are her immediate object, as they alone contain these valuable relics of a former world, which must be snatched at the moment of their fall, at the continual risk of being crushed by the half suspended fragments they leave behind, or be left to be destroyed by the returning tide: - to her exertions we owe nearly all the fine specimens of Ichthyosauri of the great collections; and, to shew that it is one which rewards industry a single specimen of her's, far inferior to this placed in the Institution was lately sold to the College of Surgeons [as a result of the publicity of the Birch sale] for the sum of One Hundred Pounds.

She began identifying fossilized feces (coprolites) in 1824. Inside or outside the animal source, these provided a link to the animals that produced them. She was likely the first person to look inside coprolites to see fish remains, scales, and bones, which helped people learn what the animals ate.

Also in 1824, Mary found a Brittle star, a relative of starfish.  

Mary's Brittle star in the Natural History Museum, London.

In 1828, Mary made not one but two discoveries.

• the sheath and ink bag of a Belemnosepia, an invertebrate relative to squid and cuttlefish (which she dissected to investigate their anatomy)
• a winged reptile Pterodactylus macronyx (Britain's first example)

(left) Belemnosepia: top is Mary's find; bottom is sketch of whole animal

(right) top is sketch of 1784 pterosaur by Egid Verhelst; bottom is drawing of what it might look like

Mary then discovered a new type of fish in 1829, the Squalo-raja (45 cm, 17 inches). In fact, she found only the front half and sold it to one buyer, and later found a second half and sold it to another. It's like a cross between a shark and a ray. This was something Mary herself deduced when she practiced comparative anatomy by dissecting a ray. She decided that the vertebrae anatomy alone indicated that it was different. 

Front half of Squalo-raja (The Geological Society)

Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche was one of the few men in science who helped Mary Anning and who lived in Lyme Regis. Together, they searched for fossils as teenagers, then later he became the first director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and the first President of the Palaeontographical Society. Although he did not include her name as a source for sampled he described, he defended her many scientific claims. He drew a colorful picture Duria Antiquior, A More Ancient Dorset in 1830 depicting life when the fossils she found was teeming on Earth. It won so much acclaim with his colleagues that he commissioned a lithographic copy and sold many of them, with money going to Mary.

Duria Antiquior (Wikipedia)

By 1838, Mary's fossil shop had started earning 25 pounds as a grant from the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the British government. 

Mary's fossil shop, 1842, drawn by W.H. Prideaux and E. Liddon

The naturalist and Swiss paleontologist Louis Agassiz visited Lyme Regis in 1834 on vacation and found himself talking with Mary Anning. He was impressed with her knowledge and later named two specimens of fish after her, Acrodus anningiae and Belenostomus anningiae in the 1840s. Others followed with similar accolades only after she died.

Mary Anning was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1845 and passed away on March 9, 1847. The Geological Society, to which she was never allowed as a member, gave her money for treatments. Henry De la Beche wrote and delivered a eulogy to her at a meeting of the Society and published it in its quarterly transactions, the first such eulogy given for a woman. He remarked on her hard work and incredible knowledge, and he noted that without her careful fossil preparation and sketches, the Society would never have been able to publish their great works.

Mary Anning's gravestone in Lyme Regis (From YouTube)

Geologist and paleontologist William Buckland met Mary when she was 16 and taught her about geology and paleontology. He was the first to describe fossil remains as that of a dinosaur. He worked with her on fossilized feces and coined the name coprolites. Buckland also kept a supply of the Duria Antiquior prints to hand out at his lectures. It was Buckland who recommended the annual stipend to her in 1838. However, she was barred from joining scientific circles as an equal. As a result, Mary herself never published her findings, except to sketch what she'd uncovered and to write messages to collectors and museums. 

A younger friend Anna Pinney wrote of Mary in her diary:

“She says the world has used her ill … these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal of publishing works, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages.” (quoted from fossilbias.com)

Mary was therefore often depressed, but Pinney wrote she was complex, as shown by being simultaneously witty & kind, as well as rude, crass, and quick to anger.

Mary Anning around 1842 (artist unknown, Natural History Museum)

Mary Anning's accomplishments in paleontology will not be forgotten. Books have been written about her, and a movie Ammonite was based on her life. She was mentioned in the movie The French Lieutenant's Woman, too. An international meeting of historians, palaeontologists, fossil collectors, and others met on the 200th anniversary of her birth. Coins and stamps have been issued in her honor. But most importantly, her collections of fossils are found all over the world, earning her the title "greatest fossil hunter".

Statue of Mary Anning in Lyme Regis (Wikipedia)

A story of insulin and the treatment of diabetes 

There are two main types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2. With type 1, your body stops making insulin due to an autoimmune reaction (the body attacks itself by accident) against beta cells in the pancreas. With type 2, it still makes insulin, but your body doesn't use it efficiently. So, with type 1, you need insulin injected into your body daily or you will die. You may not even know you have type 2 because of a range of severity; it begins slowly over time and affects mostly adults. Women may also contract diabetes when they are pregnant.

Pancreatic islet cells from human stem cells used to treat diabetes (sciencenews.com)

The number of people in the world with type 1 diabetes was 9 million in 2017 (WHO), with most living in high-income countries. There is no known cause. Overall, including type 2 diabetes, the number rose from 200 million in 1990 to 830 million in 2022. Over 2 million died in 2021, and other consequences of diabetes can be blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke and lower limb amputation. Clearly, controlling diabetes is very important across the globe.

The pancreas is the gland that makes insulin, which is a hormone. The pancreas is also an organ that is part of the digestive system because it makes various enzymes that break down food in the first section of the small intestine called the duodenum. Insulin is made by beta cells, which are part of a cluster of cells called the Islets of Langerhans.

Location and anatomy of the human pancreas (Wikipedia)

The body breaks down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into smaller chemical compounds that become easier for cells to use. The small intestine absorbs most of the food breakdown products, and special cells help these nutrients cross the intestinal lining so they go into the bloodstream. From there, the blood carries them to places where they are used or stored. Carbohydrates are broken into sugars like glucose, proteins are broken into amino acids, and fats are broken into fatty acids and glycerol.

Inside the small intestine, the inner layer is made of tiny folded ridges called villi. Each of these villi has even more, smaller ridges called microvilli. From there, the epithelial cells take glucose from the intestine and pass it to capillaries or the lymph system.

Cross-section of the small intestine, closer look at the microvilli and glucose uptake

(Modified from Wikipedia)

Glucose is your body’s main source of energy. Insulin helps it to get inside cells so they can use it. Below are 2 diagrams to show this. The one on the left is a simplified one; the one on the right shows more details.

How insulin acts to bring glucose into cells (modified from news-medical.net)

• Left diagram: Insulin and glucose have separate receptors that attach to them on a cell surface. Insulin binds first and opens the glucose receptor to let it enter.
• Right diagram: (1) insulin binds to its receptor. (2) that causes the receptor to change on the inside portion. (3) The change sends biochemical signals to a glucose transporter called GLUT4 inside cells. It floats on standby until this happens and is attached to a membrane bubble called a vesicle. (4) When insulin receptors change inside the cell, a signal is sent to move the GLUT4 vesicle to the cell membrane where it fuses. Now, GLUT4 acts as a gateway to let only glucose inside the cell.

How did we learn about the pancreas and insulin?

An Egyptian document described a condition where patients produced excessive urine. Physicians of the 5th and 6th century BCE first noticed that some people had urine with a sweet taste and called the condition madhumeha ("honey urine"). Chinese doctors described a "wasting thirst" which included excessive thirst and urination. The Greeks named the condition diabetes from a word meaning "to pass or run through". Diabetes mellitus was given as the full name from the Latin word meaning "honeyed" or "sweet". But until the late 19th century, the pancreas was not thought to be involved.

In 1869, Paul Langerhans, a German medical student, discovered two different groups of cells in the pancreas: one produced fluids for digestion, and the others (named the islet cells after his name) which had an unknown function. But, in 1889, two German scientists Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering removed the pancreas from a dog and observed that the dog then developed diabetic symptoms, suggesting it was an important organ for controlling blood sugar. Eugene L. Opie as a medical student at Johns Hopkins University noticed in 1900 that islet cells were damaged in people who had diabetes (probably type 1), so the islet cells were thought to produce insulin. From 1899 to 1906, many researchers investigated the different cell types in the pancreas by staining them with different chemicals. In 1906, pathologist and anatomist Lydia DeWitt tied off the pancreatic duct in cats and noticed that even though this caused damage to the pancreas and its digestive function, it didn't stop glucose metabolism (by insulin, which had not yet been isolated). Islet cells secrete it directly into the bloodstream from surrounding capillaries. These and other findings narrowed down the source for insulin.

Minkowski (left) and von Mering (right) (from the FDA "100 Years of Insulin")

Canadian physician Frederick Banting and University of Toronto researcher John Macleod were the first to extract insulin successfully in 1921 from islet cells, not whole pancreases. They worked initially on live dogs as sources, then switched to fetal calves from a slaughterhouse. Banting and Macleod's team was using the name "isletin" for the chemical they had isolated because it came from islet cells in the pancreas. But the term "insulin" was being used in Europe more commonly since 1916 when Belgian researcher Jean de Meyer, had already proposed the term “insulin”, from insula (Latin for “island,”). 

Notebook entry from Banting's lab with dog subject. Note the word "isletin" used. (Harvard Countway Library)

The work was done at Connaught Laboratories, part of the Department of Hygiene at the U of Toronto. After promising results of injecting the insulin into dogs and rabbits, the first human test subject was in 1922. 

(left) Banting's laboratory; (right) Connaught Laboratories insulin extraction equipment (University of Toronto)

But their method (patented in 1923) to produce insulin couldn't provide a large quantity. American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company took over, and with its access to slaughterhouses, they were able to source thousands of pounds of pig and cattle pancreases as sources of insulin. Their product Iletin was the first commercially available insulin. Even though it was a mixture of pig and cattle insulin, it was still effective in humans, and the mixture's content differed depending on which animal pancreas was more available at the time.

Package of Iletin from Eli Lilly (collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk)

In the 1940s-1950s, pig-derived insulin was found to have fewer allergic reactions, and by the 1970s-1980s most or all of Lilly's insulin came from pig pancreases. The next phase in insulin production came in 1975 at the birth of the recombinant DNA revolution. The Swiss company Ciba-Geigy created the first synthetic insulin, and it was from human DNA. In 1978, Genentech demonstrated how this could be made by E. coli bacteria after the gene was inserted. The first human trials took place in 1980. The next 5-6 years saw several companies learning to produce it this way.

One-minute explanation of making recombinant human insulin. (YouTube)

Currently, cellular production is the commonest method to produce recombinant insulin. E. coli and two types of yeast contribute equally to the world's supply. Three pharmaceutical companies manufacture 90-96% of it, making marketing and sales concerns problematic.

There are 5 types of insulin used by patients depending on a variety of factors. They involve how fast they take effect and how long they stay active: rapid-acting, short-acting, intermediate-acting, long-acting, and ultra-long-acting. Type 1 diabetes patients usually need injections 1-2 times a day. Type 2 patients might need only the long-acting type. To get it into the body, there are 3 basic devices: syringe, pen, or subcutaneous pump. There is even an inhaler with powdered insulin.

Insulin delivery systems

A fifth method is experimental at this time. Instead of injecting or inhaling insulin itself, the new treatment involves transplanting insulin-making cells. Here are three examples.

• CellTrans, Inc. Lantidra is a recently FDA-approved (2023) cell therapy which takes pancreatic cells from deceased donors and infuses them into type 1 diabetics. 

• ViaCyte. Another proposed cell therapy method is to put cells in a membrane capsule which is implanted in the body. These are stem cells from embryos that were stimulated to become pancreatic cells. The membrane is like Gore-Tex and allows blood vessels to grow across the walls and through the cell mass, but not to allow the body's immune system to contact the encapsulated cells.

Encapsulation system from ViaCyte (Cell Reports Medicine, 2021)

• Vertex Pharmaceuticals. A third cell therapy system involves taking healthy adult bone marrow donors' cells, isolating mesenchymal stem cells, and programming them like the embryo stem cells mentioned above, so that they transform into beta-like cells which respond to glucose in the blood. These cells naturally settle in the liver instead of the pancreas.

Schematic of removing bone marrow cells to produce cells transformed for transplantation

(BioMedical Research & Therapy, 2021)

Many factors are involved in deciding which treatment for diabetes is best.

• efficacy of the type of insulin
• ease of use (for example, a pen vs an insulin syringe)
• cost (varies by country, but when immunosuppressive drugs are needed for cell therapy, the price is very high)
• availability (sometimes where ethical or religious concerns about the source of insulin or stem cells blocks access)
• patient conditions (age, type, and extent of diabetes)
• doctors' advice 

Micro-sparks between water droplets may have started life on Earth

Link to article

How did life begin on Earth? Nobody knows with a high level of certainty. Hypotheses have been around for a long time. Basically, what is needed is the right chemicals to mix, a way to mix them, the right atmospheric conditions, and energy to boost their reactions. And time, lots of time. The most common elements needed are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus. This article will talk about only the energy sources researchers have speculated could help make the building blocks.

In the 1920s, Soviet biochemist Alexander Oparin and British scientist J.B.S. Haldane came up with concepts to explain how life might have started from the raw materials on the planet. Both thought that it all started in the oceans and used lightning and UV light from the sun as energy sources. Oparin described organic molecules formed in the ocean into droplets (coacervates) where chemical reactions could take place more efficiently. Haldane described the overall situation as a "hot dilute soup" (later changed by various sources into "primordial soup") and focused on the possible chemical reactions in general. 

Coacervates: micro-droplets of organic material in water (Wikipedia)

At the time, scientists had a poor understanding of the chemistry involved in geology. Most felt that since the atmosphere today has a lot of oxygen, it must have always had it. But Oparin and Haldane disregarded that idea. Some pointed to the fact that oxygen is necessary for fire, not just life. Microbiology was not as advanced as today, so they also thought that anaerobic bacteria (bacteria that cannot live in the presence of oxygen) were just defective life forms. 

Geochemistry results in the 1930s-1950s showed that extremely old mineral deposits like iron did not contain oxygen. That suggested the atmosphere lacked oxygen, and that's when origin of life hypotheses began using that idea as background for further studies.

Oparin and Haldane proposed only hypothetical notions; they conducted no experiments. Twenty years later in 1952, PhD student Stanley Miller and his mentor & Nobel laureate Harold Urey put together a lab experiment to test the Oparin-Haldane concept. Using information they thought to be accurate at the time about the ancient Earth's atmosphere, they did the following. Methane, ammonia, and hydrogen were sealed in a 5-liter glass flask to simulate the atmosphere at the time. They ran electrical sparks through it to simulate lightning that would have occurred. This was connected to a 500-milliliter flask half-filled with water that was heated to boiling to simulate the oceans (minus salt content). Water vapor flowed into the atmosphere flask. Water vapor that cooled and condensed flowed into a trap where samples could be taken. If any chemicals in the atmosphere mixed with the water vapor, they could be analyzed for changes. In just one day, trap water was pink; after a week, it was dark red and cloudy. 

Image from Wikipedia

Five amino acids were found. At the same time (1952-1953), other investigators were conducting similar experiments. One found no change, and another found a sticky resinous mixture too complex to analyze. Miller repeated his work in 1957 with a different atmosphere, based on new assumptions (like what gases might have come out of volcanoes).

• 1952 atmosphere: methane, ammonia, hydrogen, water
• 1957 atmosphere: different combinations of methane, ammonia, hydrogen (or nitrogen), water, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide

Stanley Miller and his apparatus (From Astronoo.com)

He found 22-23 amino acids in his mixture, along with hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and chemicals called aldehydes and other organic materials. HCN is a very reactive molecule important in forming other organic (carbon-containing) compounds.

After Miller's death in 2007, Professor Jeffrey Bada inherited Miller's equipment and found samples from the 1952 work. Analysis showed the old mixture now had over 20 amino acids.

Bada holding a vial containing Miller's original samples (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

Since Miller's ongoing work from the 1950s and beyond, Bada and others conducted additional experiments with different conditions, usually using electrical sparks as the energy source, but some also used just heat. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun likely had a stronger effect on an early Earth than it does now because there was no ozone layer back then to block it. It is thought to be a strong influence on creating HCN, for example.

• Joan/John Oró (1961) showed that HCN could form building blocks of nucleic acids leading to DNA & RNA. He and colleagues also in 1971, showed the high abundance of amino acids and various hydrocarbons in the Murchison meteorite in 1971. 
• Carl Sagan and Bishun N. Khare (1979) examined the tar-like residue from experiments such as Miller's (and their own where they used UV radiation). They named it tholins, and it is a mixture of many polymers that can be broken down into many types of organic molecules (sugars, amino acids, nucleic acid building blocks).
• In 2012, Sarah Horst and her colleagues treated gases found in Titan's atmosphere with UV radiation and generated tholins. They also found that these could make amino acids and nucleic acid precursors.

Carl Sagan (The Conversation)

Another hypothesis with a different energy source concerns deep-sea hydrothermal vents. These are sites of some of the oldest fossils in the world and are found everywhere.

Locations of known hydrothermal vents (yellow circles) (Martin et al., 2008; Nature Review)

The heat (60°C-405°C) from these alkaline vents comes from underground magma mixing with seawater that seeps through pores. It comes out mixed with many minerals and gases, and temperature gradients form between the vent and 2°C seawater. The heat plays a minor role in providing energy for the chemical reactions. It is the chemistry itself that is so reactive that changes happen on their own. The smoky plumes eventually spread sideways for thousands of kilometers before settling. Inside the vent chimneys, pockets can form with isolate chemical reactions and provide more concentrated conditions.

A hydrothermal vent, one of many found all over the world's seas (From Oregon State University, SciNews)

The smoky plumes eventually spread sideways for thousands of kilometers before settling. Inside the vent chimneys, pockets can form with isolate chemical reactions and provide more concentrated conditions.

Diagram of hydrothermal vent showing seawater carrying minerals (Astrobiology, 2023)

Finally, aside from lightning, UV radiation, heat, and direct chemical reactions underwater, another source of energy has been suggested to produce organic molecules. In shallow pools, a combination of UV radiation, mild underground heat, and a wet/dry cycle has been shown to produce organic molecules. Montmorillonite clay and mica are the two most common examples of surfaces where these pools might form. Both are composed of aluminum silicates but are different enough to give researchers separate ideas on forming primordial compounds. The clay swells and shrinks a littlein wet/dry cycles (such as those found in caves, where montmorillonite is commonly found), but mica does it more; any trapped organic molecules might be mixed better with that mechanical action. Clay's sodium and calcium are better for polymerizing reactions than the potassium in mica, but mica holds the compounds more tightly. Each has been shown to form the following molecules.

• Clay and mica: RNA precursors
• Clay: peptides and nucleobases
• Mica: protocells and flavin mononucleotide (a molecule that helps chemical reactions take place)

Cross-section of mica sheets showing how thin spaces and large gaps can hold molecules

in concentrated pockets for better reactions (Hansma, 2022; Biophysical Journal)

Recently, Richard Zare and his team at Stanford University have come up with another means to inject energy into the process of making organic molecules. They feel that lightning strikes may not have been frequent enough in an early Earth, and that even when they did occur, the changes in atmospheric components caused by these infrequent electrical discharges would simply be diluted in the oceans and washed away. 

We know that regular lightning interacts with nitrogen (N2) in the atmosphere to make mostly nitrates (NO₃^-) and to a lesser degree nitrites (NO₂^-) by combining it with oxygen and water. These later combine with water vapor to form nitrous acid (HNO₂) or nitric acid (HNO₃). There was less oxygen in the young Earth atmosphere, but lightning would still have made changes. 

And some have even speculated that lightning caused by volcanoes creates more HCN than from regular cloud lightning. The reason is that there is more concentrated starting material in volcano plumes where the lightning takes places. Ash within a volcanic plume creates static electricity when its particles rub together, thus generating lightning.

Volcanic lightning from Mount Shinmoedake, Japan, 2011 (Reuters)

Cloud lightning is formed when a mass of negative and positive charges build up in the top and bottom of storm clouds. These charges are formed when ice crystals (0.01-0.5 mm diameter) bump into graupel (2-5 mm diameter) and transfer an electron. Graupel is a soft hail-like ice crystal that falls through supercooled water and gets coated in a frosty layer. It is usually negative and heavier, and air currents send the positive lighter ice crystals higher into the cloud.

Graupel (left, HowStuffWorks) and its formation in a cloud (Saunders, 2008; Space Science Reviews)

As the negative charged particles increase on the bottom of a cloud, they send out an invisible "ladder" of electrons, this attracts positive ions from the ground, and a connection is made which is seen as a bolt of lightning. Similar things happen within a cloud or from cloud to cloud.

Lightning formed between the negative "ladder" and ground positive charges (NOAA.gov).

Instead of volcanic or regular cloud lightning, Zare has recently presented data in April 2025 on "microlightning" as an energy source to form organic molecules. Zare read a 2024 report from a former colleague Anubhav Kumar from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research. Kumar and his researchers noticed that microdroplets of water emitted from steamers, humidifier, and spray bottles changed atmospheric nitrogen (N2) the way lightning did. They determined it was due to a weak electric discharge (corona discharge) at the air–water interface. 

Pure water has no electrical charge, but tiny water droplets can acquire a positive or negative charge. In 1890, German researchers Julius Elster and Hans Geitel followed up on Elster's 1879 doctoral thesis which examined electrical phenomena of finely dispersed liquids. Together, without any knowledge of electrons, they they developed a theory of the electric processes in thunderstorm clouds and measured a negative charge 500 meters above a waterfall, suggesting the misty water droplets had a charge on them.

Elster and Geitel, and their electroscope to measure precipitation electricity (History of Geo- and Space Sciences)

Zare and associates conducted 2 experiments. In the first, they built a chamber and filled it with methane, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and ammonia, then used a nebulizer to inject water in microdroplets. Liquid samples were removed, but gaseous samples were analyzed directly in the chamber with a device called a mass spectrometer.

Zare's experimental setup to detect organic molecules formed 

from water mist and microlightning (Science Advances, 2025)

The second setup involved suspending a drop of water with sound waves, then using the same waves to split smaller drops from the main one. A photon detector measured light coming off the different sizes of drops when they collided.

Suspending a drop of water and measuring luminescence (Science Advances, 2025).

• Results from the first experiment showed the production of glycine (an amino acid), uracil (a building block of nucleic acids), urea (useful in making more amino acids), and organic molecules with cyanide components (cyanoacetylene, cyanoacetaldehyde, and cyanoacetic acid).
• In the second experiment (conducted in the dark with high-speed cameras), they saw flashes of light when large and small microdroplets of water touched each other.

Open to full screen to see blue flashes of microlightning near the center of the screen.

These results are not conclusive, but they strongly suggest that sprays of water can generate electric micro-sparks similar to lightning and transform the environment arouund them. Thunderstorms, ocean waves, raindrops hitting the ground, waterfalls, and other mechanisms generate microdroplets which can all contribute to a potential to ionize atmospheric gases. Such sources are more widespread than random lightning bolts and might produce more organic molecules in a wider area than localized lightning strikes. They likely contributed to the effects of cloud and volcanic lightning, UV radiation, and the wet-dry cycles on clay surfaces to bring about building blocks of life in a young Earth. 

What's more, these may all serve as models for what could happen on other planets as well, depending on the chemicals present and the right temperatures. And, given enough time.

Scientists want to turn moon dust into solar panels

Link to article

Although solar panel technology was available during the NASA Apollo missions, none was used on any mission, whether en route to the Moon, orbiting it, or during lunar landing missions. Silver-zinc batteries or hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells were used instead. Part of the reason was based on weight vs. fuel, and part was based on the short-term needs. Even experiments performed on the Moon did not use solar panels. Depending on what phase of daylight the Moon was in, there was also a problem of being in total darkness for two weeks at a time. Skylab, established in 1973, was the first laboratory in space to use solar panels. Researchers are now reconsidering their use for long-term Moon bases that could potentially be established. Their concepts are meant to get around the problem of packing heavy panels for the one-way trip.

Skylab with its X-shaped solar panel array for the telescope and the side panels for the habitat section (NASA).

On September 12, 2023, I posted about NASA conceiving of a levitation system called FLOAT on the moon to transport materials. It involves a magnetic robot ore carrier system powered by solar panels. Bringing anything to the Moon (people, water, food, construction supplies, etc.) adds weight and high cost to each mission. But, if things could be made with lunar materials, that would simplify matters and lessen the costs. This concept is called In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), whether it is being developed for the Moon, Mars, or any other body in space. 

In a June 2025 article in Chemical Engineering Journal, examples are described for ISRU conversion of materials found on Mars to potentially make rocket propellants, water, and oxygen.

Concept for converting Martian materials (CEJ, 2025)

ISRU techniques have been considered even before the 1969 Apollo 11 moon mission. To date, none have ever been employed. It is considered too risky to depend on an ISRU technique to extract water as the only source for the astronauts, so just for safety, any missions that might take place would have to bring their own water as well as the equipment to extract it. Gerald Sanders (NASA Space Center) and William Lawson (NASA Kennedy Space Center) published a 2011 paper with 4 examples of testing ISRU on Earth.

The first was design and testing of a bulldozer blade called LANCE (Lunar Attachment Node for Construction and Excavation ), which was meant to flatten areas and scoop lunar "soil" (regolith) into protective barriers and landing pads, or to cover buildings and protect them from solar radiation. It was tested at the rolling sand dunes at Moses Lake, Washington (2008) and Flagstaff, Arizona (2009).

LANCE blade on the NASA Chariot rover chassis; simulated covering of shelters with regolith

(From Kennedy Space Center Swamp Works & YouTube)

Sand dunes are different from lunar regolith. Something closer to that material is needed, so a second series of ISRU test were done at Mauna Kea, Hawaii in 2008. It had volcanic material (tephra) with a grain size and mineral properties similar to regolith. Two Lunar Outpost-scale Hydrogen Reduction process systems were built for mixing and heating with hydrogen, water vapor removal and collection, water electrolysis, and oxygen storage. A second one called ROxygen stirred and heated the regolith to extract oxygen.

Two regolith hydrogen reduction systems at Mauna Kea (Advances in Space Research, 2011)

Diagram of regolith processing (NASA)

In 2010, the third and fourth ISRU tests were performed, again at Mauna Kea. Part one had a different system (a solar concentrator) to melt regolith before extracting water, and this time water was electrolyzed into oxygen and hydrogen. Part two stored the hydrogen produced from water electrolysis tanks and later used it to power a solar concentrator and water electrolysis subsystems. The oxygen from the water  was used to fire a small liquid oxygen/methane thruster to burn (sinter) volcanic ash into harder material and to power a communications display.

2010 regolith processors: electrolysis and solar concentrator (left), fuel cell and hydrogen tank (right)

(Advances in Space Research, 2011)

But what about building solar panels, not just extracting water and electrolyzing it, and not just piling moon regolith for construction purposes? Panels are far more complex. A panel consists of solar modules, which are each made up of solar cells.

Image adapted from Wikipedia

The U.S. satellite Vanguard-1 (launched on March 17, 1958) was the first satellite ever to use solar power. It consisted of a spherical body 16.5 cm (6.4 inches) in diameter, with 30 cm (12 inches) long antennae forming an X shape. Its purpose was as follows:

• Test the launch capabilities of the Vanguard rocket system.
• Study Earth’s shape and atmospheric density by measuring its orbit.
• Serve as a test of solar cell technology in space.

Its chemical batteries provided 10 milliwatts of power to send data to Earth for early tracking and to help get Vanguard-1 into orbit. These died in 21 days as expected. Solar cells provided only 5 milliwatts and were less reliable, but they continued to operate to send data back for 6 years. The solar cells eventually failed due to radiation damage, temperature cycling, or electronics failure.

Mounting Vanguard-1 on the rocket; arrow shows one of the solar cells (from Aerospace America)

Improvements in solar cell technology were made over time to allow stronger power applications. For example, the International Space Station's 272,000 solar cells (in an area of about 27,000 square feet, or 2,500 square meters) generate hundreds of kilowatts of power (1 kilowatt = 1,000 watts = 1,000,000 milliwatts).

International Space Station and its solar arrays (NASA)

So, how do solar cells work and how are they constructed?

Each solar cell has two layers of silicon semiconductor: one has loose electrons flowing in it (N-layer), and the other has holes that can be filled by the electrons (P-layer). Photons from the sun pass through the protective glass coataing, then hit the area where these layers meet, knock off electrons, and start the process of electron flow. It moves through the N-layer out of the cell, to a place where it can be used or stored, and then back again to the P-layer through the aluminum sheet on the bottom if it isn't stored.

How a solar cell works (From Mr. Solar)

Recently, German scientists and engineers at the University of Potsdam have proposed two ways to improve the situation of sending heavy materials to the Moon to serve as solar panels. One is to use lunar regolith to make the glass component of solar cells, and the other is to use a promising new technology to make more efficient cells altogether.

Glass is used for two parts of a solar cell. One is to cover it and serve as a protective shield against micrometorites and radiation. The other is to serve as a base coating, and on top of that the various parts of a solar cell are layered. To make the glass, the German researchers proposed melting lunar regolith. There are basically two types: one from the dark smooth mare regions (17% of the Moon's surface) and one from the brighter cratered highlands (83% of the surface).

Image from The Open University

Maria/Lowland material basalt because it was formed when meteors hit and allowed subterranean magma to rise up and fill the impact area. They are richer in iron and magnesium. Lunar terrae are older by 0.2-0.7 billion years and consist mostly of an igneous mineral called anorthosite, a type of feldspar with more alumina and lime. Which one is better to make "moonglass"?

Formation of maria "seas" on the Moon (from space.fm)

Based on analysis of rocks returned by Apollo missions, the researchers at the Technische Universität Braunschweig (TUBS) in Germany used 100% materials from Earth to make simulated regolith from terrae and maria. They were called TUBS-T and TUBS-M for terra and mare simulants, respectively. 

Regolith simulants (Planetary and Space Science, 2020)

They melted each simulant at 1,500ºC in an electrical resistance furnace (think ultra-high-powered toaster oven capable of generating 3,000ºC). Because of the greater iron and titanium content, the TUBS-M material resulted in a black glass which did not permit light to pass. However, the TUBS-T material with more aluminum oxide and calcium oxide produced a yellowish transparent glass.

Images taken from Cuervo-Ortiz et al., 2025)

Optical and structural properties were similar to regular glass, although the yellow color reduced transmistion of light from 95% to 44%. Removing the iron with some sort of magnetic technology is thought to increase light transmission to 90-95%. But the presence of iron itself is actually a benefit that researchers will have to take into account before deciding how much to remove. Normally, a 0.1 millimeter-thick glass covers a solar cell in space, and although that's enough to protect the cell from radiation, it becomes damaged with extended radiation exposure, causing darkening and even cracks which affect the output of the cell. Glass can be treated to minimize this, but it is expensive. TUBS-T moonglass, however, seems to show radiation resistance due to the presence of its iron.

Structures of TUBS-T moonglass and regular glass (from Cuervo-Ortiz et al., 2025)

The University of Potsdam researchers also proposed a different way to make solar cells. Instead of using silicon, they conceived of perovskites. Perovskite (in the singular form) is a mineral of calcium, titanium, and oxygen (CaTiO3). But the word perovskites (in the plural form) is a generic name for a classification of minerals with the same crystal structure as perovskite, even though they may contain different elements to replace the three already there in its three-part structure. Pevroskites has a generic label of A, B and X in an interchangeble configuration with the same crystal shape. 

Perovskite mineral (CaTiO3), left; perovskite structure, right (oxygen=red, titanium=gray, calcium=blue)

Image from Wikipedia

Silicon-based solar cells, as shown above, have a positive and negative layer sandwiched together, and the sunlight activates the electrical charge where they meet. Pevrokite-based technology puts a pevoskite layer between two similar positive and negative layers of non-silicone material. When light hits the pevroskite, it energizes it to begin a flow of electrons to one of the other layers.

Process of spraying pevroskite on moonglass, and final assembly of solar cell (Cuervo-Ortiz et al., 2025)

Depending on what the surrounding layers are and in what layout, a pevroskite solar cell may have 29% efficiency compare to 24-25% for silicon cells. They may even generate electricity at a significantly lower cost per watt. Because it is sprayed on, it is a thin layer lighter than a silicon cell.

Lunar regolith contains only 0.5% perovskite mineral (with titanium), so it would have to be carried to the Moon. The most current concept in order to minimize weight cost is to ship its chemical components, then mix them on the Moon, and spray them onto the moonglass.

There are still many factors that need to be worked out for a moonglass-pevroskite solar cell can be economically and practically feasible:

• Melting regolith would have to be done with a solar furnace, not an electric resistance furnace. That has to be shipped in pieces first, then assembled.
• TUBS-T was made on Earth to certain specifications, but samples of actual regolith may not be as pure.
• The mixing process for pevroskites may not be as uniform on the Moon with its 1/6 gravity of Earth. So, centrifugal or other types of mixing procedures need to be worked out.
• It is not known how evenly the pevroskite solution can be sprayed evenly with lighter gravity, and the apparatus needs to be shipped there.
• In addition to the moonglass and pevroskite (or silicon if pevroskite is abandoned) are still only 2 components of a solar cell and its larger version of a panel. Those materials also need to be sent.

But engineers tackle one step at a time, and much like Neil Armstrong's words of "One small step for man", they will also advance their ideas one by one in hopes of providing hope for a solar-powered moonbase.