Under alkaline hydrothermal conditions, H2 should react with CO2 to form organic molecules. Under almost any other conditions, it will not. In this chapter, I have already ruled out virtually all other environments as workable settings for the origin of life. We have established on thermodynamic grounds that to make a cell from scratch requires a continuous flow of reactive carbon and chemical energy across rudimentary catalysts in a constrained through-flow system. Only hydrothermal vents provide the requisite conditions, and only a subset of vents – alkaline hydrothermal vents – match all
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