Stellar flare: bringer of life and death NASA/GSFC/SDO

Planets walk a thin line between nurturing life or killing it off altogether, blasted as they are by high-energy particles spewing from stellar flares. While these particles can bombard a world, causing biological damage and chipping away at its vital atmosphere, they might also kick-start the stuff of living things.

By simulating a solar flare blasting young Mars with high-energy protons, Avi Loeb at Harvard University and his colleagues found that these mighty bursts might create the building blocks of life.

To forge simple atoms and molecules into more complex organic compounds, …