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No Miracle Step: Testing a Minimal Viable Spark for the Origin of Life (Earth · Mars · K2-18b)
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Description: This project openly tests a unified, mechanism-anchored origin-of-life framework—the Minimal Viable Spark (MVS). The model posits that life begins when a natural battery (H₂/CO₂ redox and ΔpH) acts across catalytic Fe/Ni-sulfide interfaces inside a container (vent micropores, lacustrine mud microenvironments, fatty-acid vesicles), under dynamics (steady flows or cycles). This setting generates autocatalytic carbon fixation, prebiotic energy currencies (thioesters, acetyl-phosphate), and, via wet–dry or microdroplet cycling, template-directed polymers that can replicate. We cross-validate on three arenas: early Earth analogs, Mars (Jezero) redox fronts co-hosting organics with vivianite/greigite, and Hycean-like exoplanets (e.g., K2-18b) showing CH₄+CO₂ in H₂-rich atmospheres.
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Interface-Heartbeat: A Decisive Test of the Spark-of-Life (SoL/MVS)
We preregister a single pass/fail experiment that aims to demonstrate sustained, self-amplifying CO₂-to-C₁–C₄ chemistry at a porous FeS core / Fe-phos...
From Heartbeat to Protolife (SoL/MVS): Package · Copy · Select
We preregister a conditional follow-on to the Interface-Heartbeat test. If the wall experiment succeeds (S-curve products + coupled exotherm + currenc...
Deoxy Takeover: RNA→DNA in the Spark-of-Life Framework
This preregistration specifies Experiment 3 (“Deoxy Takeover”), the third decisive gate in the Spark-of-Life (SoL/MVS) model of abiogenesis. It tests ...
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