Genesis on Diamonds

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The scientific community paid little attention to a visionary paper, in which Szent-Györgyi predicted that crystalline interfacial water layers would play a fundamental role in biology and evolution. It was 1971, and the proof of the existence of crystalline interfacial water layers at room temperature was virtually lacking in the literature. Recently, we provided experimental evidence for their existence on hydrogenated nanocrystalline diamond at room temperature. Crystallinity resulted from a decrease in conductance in response to an increase in humidity, associated with a decrease in the order of the interfacial water molecules implicated in proton conductivity. The correlation between conductance and humidity is not exclusive to synthetic diamond: It prevails on hydrogenated natural diamonds. Hydrogenation in nature is plausible: Volcanoes emit various hot gases including hydrogen. The capacity of interfacial water layers to impose order was exposed in the process of formation of supercubane carbon nanocrystals. It is important that the order imposed to molecules landing on hydrogenated diamond is more durable and superior to that realizable on any other origin of life platform, for instance, graphite. Hydrogenated diamond advances to the best of all possible origin of life platforms.The emergence of bioorganic molecules under primitive Earth conditions is one of the major unsolved origin of life questions. The principal problem is to identify physical and chemical conditions that are favorable for the formation of life precursor structures. 1 Panspermia tries to circumvent the problem by assuming that primitive life forms, such as bacteria, have arrived on Earth from space, as star dust or via comets. 2 Origin of life models starting with a primordial soup work from two assumptions, which do not exclude each other: chemistry, which could trigger the self-assembly of abiotic organic compounds, and transfer of order from preexistent orderings. Clearly, both organization processes must occur in a biorelevant environment, that is, a wet milieu, and both are energyconsuming. Interestingly, a hostile planetary environment such as the primitive Earth, subject to rapid changes, including but not limited to volcanic and hydrothermal activity, 3 acidic atmosphere, and virtually planet-sterilizing meteorite impacts, 4 favors precisely the conditions necessary for the formation of first ordered structures, regarded as possible starting points of biological evolution. In recent laboratory experiments we found evidence for the establishment of nanoscopic crystalline interfacial water layers on hydrogenated nanocrystalline diamond at room temperature. 5 The circumstance that water adsorbed from the air becomes crystalline at room temperature attracted in fact more attention than the revelation of the implication of this water in the surface conductivity of hydrogenated diamond, a new feature in the 20-year-old puzzle. 6 The report of our results triggered an intense discussion on the implications of water in the ...

Genesis on diamonds II: contact with diamond enhances human sperm performance by 300%

“…The interplay of light with nanoscopic interfacial water layers on diamond surfaces seems to play a fundamental role in nature: Together with diurnal light variations it explains the emergence of bioorganic molecules under primitive Earth conditions, which is one of the major unsolved origin of life questions. Accordingly, diamonds are the best of all possible origin of life platforms because they promote the formation of a crystalline interfacial layer of polarized water molecules on their surfaces, which imposes order to molecules (amino acids) landing on such surfacesprecondition for the formation of biopolymers (19). Figure 2 illustrates the ROS scavenging/neutralizing effect of the nanodiamond on human sperm cells.…”

Nitrogen Fixation and Biological Behavior of Nanodiamond Colloidal Solutions

“…The above results are relevant to Szent-Györgyi's [11] heuristic idea that solid surfaces with their layers of interfacial water could function as catalytic platforms for the synthesis of prebiotic compounds, and thus to the fascinating problem of the origin of life, [13,[41][42][43][44] e. g. whether the nanodiamond occurring naturally in meteorites (and probably generated by shock waves, i. e. broadly similar to DND in origin) could be such a platform. Potentially, man-made DND can be used as a testing model for this hypothesis.…”

Nanodiamond Finding in the Hyblean Shallow Mantle Xenoliths

“…Indeed, the hydrogenated nanodiamonds create crystalline water layers, which are an excellent medium for the rapid transport of positive charge in the form of hydrogen protons. This provides the anomalously high proton mobility in bulk water, which exceeds even that of fast solid-state proton conductors31. In this respect, the proton gradients in alkaline hydrothermal vents are viewed as key processes in the origin of prebiotic molecules.…”