I shall never forget the sight. The vessel of crystallization was three quarters full of slightly muddy water - that is, dilute water-glass - and from the sandy bottom there strove upwards a grotesque little landscape of variously coloured growths: a confused vegetation of blue, green, and brown shoots which reminded one of algae, mushrooms, attached polyps, also moss, then mussels, fruit pods, little trees or twigs from trees, here and there of limbs. It was the most remarkable sight I ever saw, and remarkable not so much for its appearance, strange and amazing though that was, as on account of its profoundly melancholy nature. For when Father Leverkiihn asked us what we thought of it and we timidly answered him that they might be plants: "No," he replied, "they are not, they only act that way. But do not think the less of them. Precisely because they do, because they try to as hard as they can, they are worthy of all respect."

It turned out that these growths were entirely unorganic in their origin; they existed by virtue of chemicals from the apothecary's shop, the 'Blessed Messengers'. Before pouring the waterglass, Jonathan had sprinkled the sand at the bottom with various crystals; if I mistake not potassium chromate and sulphate of copper. From this sowing, as the result of a physical process called 'Osmotic pressure', there sprang the pathetic crop for which their producer at once and urgently claimed our sympathy. He showed us that these pathetic imitations of life were light-seeking, heliotropic, as science calls it. He exposed the aquarium to the sunlight, shading three sides against it, and behold, toward that one pane through which the light fell, thither straightway slanted the whole equivocal kith and kin: mushrooms, phallic polyp-stalks, little trees, algae, half-formed limbs. Indeed, they so yearned after warmth and joy that they clung to the pane and stuck fast there.

"And even so they are dead", said Jonathan, and tears came in his eyes, while Adrian, as of course I saw, was shaken with suppressed laughter. For my part, I must leave it to the reader's judgment whether that sort of thing is matter for laughter or tears.

You know that scene in Frankenstein, where the doctor uses electricity to bring the monster to life? While a work of science fiction, electricity does play a key role in all life on earth. Electrical impulses are all around us, powering just about everything we think and do. But how did the first life get that vital spark?

Back when the first life originated on Earth, the planet was a hot, unwelcome place - a mix of chemicals, rocks, and not much else. Somehow, in the midst of all this unpleasantness, something came alive for the first time. To find out how, scientists recently recreated some of these primordial conditions in the lab to find out how. They built chemical gardens, tiny replicas of the conditions at hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, where life might have originated. Like their real-world counterparts, the chemical gardens resemble chimneys rising from the depths of the sea (or the depths of the test tube).

They found that the interaction of chemicals in the lab (namely, iron sulfide and iron hydroxide) were enough to generate electricity. Linked together, four of the gardens generated enough electricity to power a lightbulb.

"These chimneys can act like electrical wires on the seafloor," lead author Laurie Barge said in a statement. "We're harnessing energy as the first life on Earth might have."