Deep sea vents, where hot mineral-rich water erupts from the ocean floor, have long been considered as sites where life originated. Now Japanese scientists have built an artificial deep-sea vent to create building blocks for life. A team led by Koichiro Matsuno at the University of Technology in Nagaoka, Japan, constructed a model vent to see if it could yield the simple molecules needed to get life started. The artificial vent consists of a reactor where water is heated to between 110