Evolutionary oscillation in prebiology: Igneous activity and the origins of life

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Abstract
The processes of chemical evolution are responsible for the origin of life. Three such processes have special importance: oscillation, creation, and competition. An oscillation from one kind of environment to another provides a mechanism for instituting processes that can only take place under conditions far removed from equilibrium. Oscillating evolutionary processes are likely to have played an important part in the origin of life. It is a mistake to assume that life originated in any one environment. It did not arrive in a moment of time. It was the result of a long period of chemical evolution during which it passed through a variety of environments. Biopoesis took place in an environment in which a variety of different kinds of protolife were assembled and concentrated. One essential form of protolife involved in these processes is the protocell. The experiments of Fox suggest that the creation of protocells involves violent oscillations of temperature and hydration. Igneous activity is especially characterised by oscillating conditions. Volcanic eruptions consist of violent changes from one extreme condition to another. Temperature, pressure, phase, concentration and hydration all oscillate violently, and are subject to shock pulses of many kinds. Protolife may well have passed through extremes of environment far wider than those that life itself can sustain. The most probable environment for the assembly of the various forms of protolife would be on mudbanks forming either at the mouth of streams draining regions of active vulcanicity, or round the edge of hot volcanic pools. In this situation one could find concentrated not only the various strands of protolife necessary for the final act of biopoesis, but also prebiologically formed nutrients necessary as food for the first eobionts. As soon as the first protocells start to grow, they start to compete with each other, and so initiate a new and additional evolutionary process, that of natural selection. Only after such competition has been initiated is life itself likely to be established.

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