Primordial Soup(chosen for Oct 5 discussion)

The origin of life is a hotly debated topic. Before the 1950s, scientists were split on the exact makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere. Some thought life originated on Earth from an environment made up of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen and water. Miller and Urey argued that life formed from the mixture of methane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen. In 1953, the pair developed a simple apparatus that could simulate their proposed hypothetical conditions, and they were able to observe that 10-15% of the carbon within the apparatus formed the building blocks of life providing evidence to their hypothesis. The results remain controversial but one cannot deny that this is a great experiment; Even Miller himself remarked once, “The fact that the experiment is so simple that a high school student can almost reproduce it is not a negative at all. The fact that it works and is so simple is what is so great about it.”

• A Production of Amino Acids under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions