The convergence of minerals and life. Reply to comments on "Mineral self-organization on a lifeless planet"
Résumé
Since our review covers a very long time of the less known, earliest eon in Earth history, and we approached it with tools and information from different disciplines, we hardly expected to receive comments to the entire scope of the review. Fortunately, we have gathered with gratitude six excellent comments from different perspectives and different fields of expertise. The topic itself - what happened at the surface of the planet in a period from which there are no rocky remnants - is obviously very controversial. As Javaux and Sforna say in their comment [1], "the Hadean is a fascinating and mysterious time." So far, we have approached the Hadean from speculations and modeling. We think that it is time for an experimental approach. It is time to design experiments to help reveal the plausible scenarios that most probably hide the secrets of the conquest of the planet by organic self-organization, and ultimately by life. Therefore, we thank our commentators for the elegance with which they wrote their criticisms, their supports, and their views. Although it is a highly controversial topic, the comments are very constructive and allow us to address issues that had been left in the pipeline due to lack of space or to maintain the readability of the text. In what follows, we discuss the most important issues and observations raised by Cölfen [2], Javaux & Sforna [1], Pereto [3], Ruiz-Mirazo [4], Šponer & Šponer [5], and Vago & Westall [6].