Re-analysis of results with modern tech points to greater potential to understanding the birth of the evolutionary chain.

"What we suggest is that volcanoes belched out gases just like the ones Stanley had used, and were immediately subjected to intense volcanic lightning.

"And so each one of those volcanoes could have been a little, local prebiotic factory. And so all of that went into making the material that we refer to as the prebiotic soup."

That material could then have been washed down the flanks of volcanoes into pools or coastal bays, where the building blocks of life might have kick-started evolution.