Life on Earth began more than 3 billion years ago, evolving from the

most basic of microbes into a dazzling array of complexity over time

Abiogenesis or biopoiesis ] or OoL (Origins of Life), [6] is the natural
process of life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic
compounds.[7][8][9][10] It is thought to have occurred on Earth between 3.8
and 4.1[11] billion years ago. Abiogenesis is studied through a
combination of laboratory experiments and extrapolation from the
characteristics of modern organisms, and aims to determine how prelife chemical reactions gave rise to life on Earth.[12]The study of
abiogenesis involves geophysical, chemical, and biological
considerations,[13] with more recent approaches attempting a synthesis
of all three.[14] Many approaches investigate how self-replicating
molecules, or their components, came into existence. It is generally
thought that current life on Earth is descended from an RNA world,[15]
although RNA-based life may not have been the first life to have
existed.[16][17] The classic MillerUrey experiment and similar research
demonstrated that most amino acids, the basic chemical constituents
of the proteins used in all living organisms, can be synthesized from
inorganic compounds under conditions intended to replicate those of
the early Earth. Various external sources of energy that may have
triggered these reactions have been proposed, including lightning and
radiation. Other approaches ("metabolism-first" hypotheses) focus on
understanding how catalysis in chemical systems on the early Earth
might have provided the precursor molecules necessary for selfreplication.[18] Complex organic molecules have been found in the Solar
System and in interstellar space, and these molecules may have
provided starting material for the development of life on Earth.[19][20][21]
The panspermia hypothesis alternatively suggests that microscopic

[22]

life was distributed to the early Earth by meteoroids, asteroids and

other small Solar System bodies and that life may exist throughout the
Universe.[23] It is speculated that the biochemistry of life may have
begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a
habitable epoch when the age of the universe was only 10 to 17 million
years.[24][25] The panspermia hypothesis therefore answers questions of
where, not how, life came to be; it only postulates that life may have
originated in a locale outside the Earth.Nonetheless, Earth remains the

only place in the Universe known to harbor life,[26][27] and fossil evidence
from the Earth supplies most studies of abiogenesis. The age of the
Earth is about 4.54 billion years;[28][29][30] the earliest undisputed evidence
of life on Earth dates from at least 3.5 billion years ago,[31][32][33] and
possibly as early as the Eoarchean Era, after a geological crust started
to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean Eon. Microbial mat
fossils have been found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone in Western
Australia.[34][35][36] Other early physical evidence of biogenic substances
includes graphite discovered in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary
rocks in southwestern Greenland,[37] as well as "remains of biotic life"
found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia.[38][39] According
to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth
then it could be common in the universe."[38]