SCIENCE
WALTER GEIERSPERGER/GETTY
LONG BEFORE THERE WERE HUMANS, OR EVEN single-celled creatures, something sparked life on Earth—but precisely what is far from settled. Some new clues have come from a surprising corner of this thriving planet: mathematics. The work begins with Charles Darwin’s theory that life began when chemicals and electricity merged in “some warm little pond” in just the right way to form protein. Ben Pearce and colleagues at McMaster University recently modeled what would have happened in those ponds during Earth’s earliest days.