A totally new and highly controversial theory on the origin of life on earth, is set to cause a storm in the science world and has implications for the existence of life on other planets. Research by Professor William Martin of the University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael Russell of the Scottish Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow, claims that living systems originated from inorganic incubators – small compartments in iron sulphide rocks. The new theory radically departs from existing perceptions of how life developed and it will be published in a forthcoming issue of Philosophical Transactions series B, Chloroplasts and mitochondria: functional genomics and evolution.