A closer look
You don't actually need living things to make the ingredients for life—you just need scalding hot water and some angry rocks. Far off the axis of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Lost City vents lack the black, superheated magma-driven smoke of typical vents. Instead, they rely on a chemical reaction called serpentinization. Seawater reacts violently with exposed mantle rock, generating intense heat, hydrogen gas, and highly alkaline fluids. As this mixture hits iron and sulfur minerals in the vent walls, those minerals act as abiotic catalysts, spontaneously stitching raw carbon out of the water into organic molecules.
