Minerals help molecules thought to have been essential for early life to form. A team of US scientists may have found the 'primordial womb' in which the first life on Earth was incubated. Lynda Williams and colleagues at Arizona State University in Tempe have discovered that certain types of clay mineral convert simple carbon-based molecules to complex ones in conditions mimicking those of hot, wet hydrothermal vents (mini-volcanoes on the sea bed). Such complex molecules would have been essential components of the first cell-like systems on Earth. Having helped such delicate molecules to form, the clays can also protect them...