EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Explanation:   That which kills may also bring life.

So it may be with lightning ... the spark that charges and changes life.  Recent studies have suggested that lightning striking the ground may cause cell membranes in bacteria to become more permeable ... which means they can then acquire and exchange DNA more readily. This, in turn, may accelerate evolutionary adaptations.

NASA scientists have suggested that this surprising role of lightning in bacterial development and evolution may tell us something about possible evolutionary pathways on other planets ... although as yet, we have not acquired proof of life, bacterial or otherwise, beyond our own sphere. 

Cloud-to-cloud lightning

But lightning itself may act as if it is alive.  In the lab, physicists have now created balls of plasma -- superheated gas, as occurs with lightning -- that seem to grow, reproduce, and communicate, just like ... life.  Short of being a new form of life, though, these plasma spheres may suggest how life got started in the first place.

So where should we look for signs of life?  Lightning occurs not just on Earth, but also on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and possibly other planets, near and far.  

If the chemistry is right ... the spark of life may be more than a metaphor.