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<p>Nick Lane has some pretty wild ideas about the evolution of life.</p><p>He thinks early life was continuous with the spontaneous chemistry of undersea hydrothermal vents.</p><p>Nick’s story may be wrong, but I find it remarkable that with just that starting point, you can explain so much about why life is the way that it is — the things you’re supposed to just take as givens in biology class:</p><p>* Why are there two sexes? Why sex at all?</p><p>* Why are bacteria so simple despite being around for 4 billion years? Why is there so much shared structure between all eukaryotic cells despite the enormous morphological variety between animals, plants, fungi, and protists?</p><p>* Why did the endosymbiosis event that led to eukaryotes happen only once, and in the particular way that it did?</p><p>* Why is all life powered by proton gradients? Why does all life on Earth share not only the Krebs Cycle, but even the intermediate molecules like Acetyl-CoA?</p><p>His theory implies that earl...