Life on Earth could be over 4 billion years old?

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I'll let Anton take it away but a short version of the 'gist' - he's touching on the rocks found in Nunavut near Hudson Bay and the analysis performed on them. The oldest agreed upon fossils at present are around 3.5 billion years old and if further testing of the Hudson Bay specimens can't replicate the patterns in these rocks by purely chemical means it could turn out that the origins of life get pushed back another 700 million years to 4.2 billion.

When I think of this and think about the hydrothermal vent theory for the genesis of life I can't help but wonder that as the earth was still quite hot and had liquid oceans, there were probably quite a few more hydrothermal vents and the chemical soup in the oceans was also probably much more rich.

What has always puzzled me is that the simplest form of life on today's earth is the virus, but virii are dependent on "higher" life forms to exist. So what were the first life forms? Does this video explain?

That video, and most sources in general, imply that the first form of life was something like bacteria.

Basically bags of chemicals that including RNA,or DNA.

Long story short- two kinds of "prokaryote cells" appears those with chlorophyl (blue green "algae" which are a type of bacteria, and not really "algae"), and those without (all other kinds of bacteria).

Then about two billion years years later prokaryote cells began to invade each other, and some formed cooperative communities , that evolved into bigger cells. Cells more organized into specialized structures. These were eukaryote cells. The cells that bigger one celled micrbrobes like paramecia and amoebas (that arent bacteria) are. The organlike structures of eukaryote cells (like the cell cells of amoebas and humans) are really ancient bacteria that have taken up residence in our cells. Each of our eukaryotic cells is really a composite organism formed by a community of once free living bacteria.

Then about 600 million years ago eukaryote cells began to cooperate and form multicellular, and not microscopic creatures. And animals and plants as we know them appeared. Jellyfish, and trilobites. All of that drama of evolution (trilobites, dinosaurs, flowering plants, early man) usually portrayed in books took place in only the last 600 million years (the last 12 pecent of earth's history).

you're right that viruses are like tapeworms. Simple organisms that rely on living off of more complex creatures.