Meteor strikes may have done more than reshape Earth’s surface. New research suggests they could have created the hot, chemically rich environments needed for life to begin.
“No one knows, from a scientific perspective, how life could have been formed from an early Earth that had no life,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology and fisheries management from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025. “How does something come from nothing?”
Cinquemani led a scientific review published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering that explores where life may have first emerged. The study focuses on hydrothermal vents, where heated, mineral-laden water moves through rock and into surrounding water, creating the right energy and chemistry for complex reactions.
Her analysis highlights hydrothermal systems formed by meteor impacts as an overlooked but potentially important setting for life’s beginnings. These environments may have been widespread on early Earth, making them strong candidates for where life first took hold.
From Class Project to Scientific Publication
The study, co-authored with Rutgers oceanographer Richard Lutz, stands out because Cinquemani began the work as an undergraduate assignment that later became a peer-reviewed publication.
“It’s amazing,” Lutz said. “You often have undergraduates that are part of papers – faculty choose undergraduates all the time to work on papers and projects. But for an undergraduate to be the lead author is a huge deal.”
The project began during Cinquemani’s senior year in a course called “Hydrothermal Vents,” taught by Lutz, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Her initial task was to explore whether hydrothermal vents on Mars could have supported life.
“I was like, ‘I know nothing about this topic,'” she said. “Thinking about the origins of biology on another planet was like, whoa. Not sure how I’m going to do this.” The work pushed her beyond biology into chemistry, physics and geology, she said.
After graduating, she expanded the assignment into a full review comparing deep-sea vents and impact-generated systems. The paper went through an extensive peer-review process.
“I have never seen such a rigorous review process,” Lutz said. “There were 15 pages of comments and five different rounds of reviews. She had the patience and perseverance, and the paper turned out magnificently.”
Hydrothermal Vents as Cradles of Life
Scientists have long considered deep-sea hydrothermal vents as possible sites where life began. Discovered in the late 1970s, these systems support entire ecosystems in complete darkness.
Instead of relying on sunlight, organisms in these environments use chemical energy from compounds such as hydrogen sulfide. This process, known as chemosynthesis, allows life to thrive without photosynthesis.
Some vents are powered by heat from volcanic activity deep within Earth, while others form through chemical reactions between water and rock that generate heat without magma. In both cases, they create warm, nutrient-rich pockets in the otherwise cold and barren deep ocean.
Impact Craters as Hidden Chemical Factories
Cinquemani’s work draws attention to a less-studied type of hydrothermal system formed by meteor impacts.
When a large meteor collides with Earth, it produces intense heat that melts surrounding rock. As the crater cools and fills with water, it can develop into a hot, mineral-rich system similar to deep-sea vents.
“You have a lake surrounding a very, very warm center,” Cinquemani said. “And now you get a hydrothermal vent system, just like in the deep sea, but made by the heat from an impact.”
To understand how these environments might support life, she examined three well-known impact sites from different periods in Earth’s history. The Chicxulub crater beneath Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula formed about 65 million years ago and later hosted a long-lasting hydrothermal system. The Haughton crater in the Canadian Arctic formed around 31 million years ago. Lonar Lake in India, created about 50,000 years ago, still contains water and offers insight into how such systems evolve.
These impact-driven systems can persist for thousands to tens of thousands of years, providing enough time for simple molecules to combine into more complex structures that could eventually lead to life.
A New Perspective on Earth’s Early Conditions
Early Earth experienced frequent asteroid impacts, making these environments likely common. While impacts are often associated with destruction, they may also have created conditions suitable for life.
This perspective builds on decades of research into deep-sea vents while expanding the range of possible locations where life could have originated.
Lutz was among the early researchers who explored deep-sea vents when they were first discovered. As a young postdoctoral scientist, he joined pioneering expeditions and descended more than a mile below the ocean surface in the submersible Alvin, where he observed thriving ecosystems in total darkness.
These discoveries helped establish that life can exist without sunlight, reshaping scientific understanding of extreme environments.
“We have talked for many years about the possibility that life may have originated at deep-sea hydrothermal vents,” Lutz said.
Cinquemani’s research brings together these established ideas with newer evidence suggesting that impact-generated systems may also have played a role and, in some cases, may offer especially favorable conditions for early chemical reactions.
Implications for Life Beyond Earth
The findings may also influence the search for life elsewhere in the solar system. Hydrothermal activity is believed to exist on the ocean floors of icy moons such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus. Similar systems may have formed in impact craters on early Mars.
If these environments on Earth were capable of supporting the chemistry needed for life, they could guide scientists toward promising places to look beyond our planet.
Driven by Curiosity
For Cinquemani, the research reflects a deeper human drive to understand our origins.
“Humans are insanely curious beings,” said Cinquemani, who works as a technician at Rutgers’ New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center in Cape May, N.J., where she supports aquaculture research while preparing to pursue advanced study in marine science. “We question everything. We may never know exactly how we began, but we can try our best to understand how things might have occurred.”