Study suggests life sprang from clay: CNN

[Ivan Seeking]

A team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said they had shown materials in clay were key to some of the initial processes in forming life.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/10/25/clay.life.reut/index.html

[selfAdjoint]

Interesting that the story hypes the religion angle (inanely) and doesn't mention that the clay hypothesis is decades old. It was a Scottish scientist who proposed it, for the same sort of reasons that the scientists here cite.

It is easy to show how chemicals in the sea could combine to make the complex molecules of protolife, but they disassociate just as readily there. So you need some way to get your new molecule away from all that water. In the 1950's it was "tide pools" (requiring a just-right moon). Then in the 70s or 80s came this clay theory: the chemicals get washed up on a clay bank and it makes a matrix for them to develop in.

[Another God]

yeah, Dawkins mentioned it in the Blind Watchmaker