From Old Vials, New Hints on Origin of Life

A classic experiment exploring the origin of life has, more than a half-century later, yielded new results.

The original samples used by Stanley Miller to study the origins of life. In 1953, Stanley L. Miller, then a graduate student of Harold C. Urey at the University of Chicago, put ammonia, methane and hydrogen — the gases believed to be in early Earth’s atmosphere — along with water in a sealed flask and applied electrical sparks to simulate the effects of lightning. A week later, amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, were generated out of the simple molecules.

Enshrined in high school textbooks, the Miller-Urey experiment raised expectations that scientists could unravel the origins of life with simple chemistry experiments.

The excitement has long since subsided. The amino acids never grew into the more complex proteins. Scientists now think the composition of air on early Earth was much different from what Dr. Miller used, leading some to question whether the Miller-Urey experiment had any relevance to the still unsolved problem of the origin of life.

After Dr. Miller’s death in May last year, Dr. Jeffrey L. Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, who had been one of Dr. Miller’s graduate students, discovered cardboard boxes containing hundreds of vials of dried residues collected from the experiments conducted in 1953 and 1954.

Consulting Dr. Miller’s notebooks, Dr. Bada discovered that Dr. Miller had constructed two variations of the original apparatus. One simply used a different spark generator. The second injected steam onto the sparks.

I just love how scientists claim that sparks and lightning created life considering all the evidence of what lightning does to rocks, trees, and people these days.

“Abiogenesis is the theory that under the proper conditions life can arise spontaneously from non-living molecules. One of the most widely cited studies used to support this conclusion is the famous Miller–Urey experiment. Surveys of textbooks find that the Miller–Urey study is the major (or only) research cited to prove abiogenesis. Although widely heralded for decades by the popular press as ‘proving’ that life originated on the early earth entirely under natural conditions, we now realize the experiment actually provided compelling evidence for the opposite conclusion. It is now recognized that this set of experiments has done more to show that abiogenesis on Earth is not possible than to indicate how it could be possible. This paper reviews some of the many problems with this research, which attempted to demonstrate a feasible method of abiogenesis on the early earth.” [excerpt: Why the Miller–Urey research argues against abiogenesis]

Nice article fichori, from the link:

Although widely heralded by the press as ‘proving’ that life could have originated on the early earth under natural conditions (i.e. without intelligence), we now realize the experiment actually provided compelling evidence for exactly the opposite conclusion. For example, without all 20 amino acids as a set, most known protein types cannot be produced, and this critical step in abiogenesis could never have occurred.

My review of college textbooks found that most discussed the Miller–Urey experiments, some extensively, but few texts mentioned any of the problems. Most implied that the research has conclusively shown how the building blocks of life spontaneously generated. In part, due to the common claims in textbooks and museum exhibits, many people assume that a good, if not excellent, case exists for the Miller–Urey thesis. Davies noted that when he set out to write a book on the origin of life, he ‘was convinced that science was close to wrapping up the mystery of life’s origins’, but after spending ‘a year or two researching the field’, he is

‘… now of the opinion that there remains a huge gulf in our understanding … . This gulf in understanding is not merely ignorance about certain technical details, it is a major conceptual lacuna.’69

The Miller–Urey experiment is now an icon of evolution, presented in most all biology, zoology and evolution textbooks as clear evidence of abiogenesis, when it actually illustrates the many difficulties of chemical evolution.22

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Liberals are failing America’s students from k-12 and beyond, without a doubt they are unable to be trusted as objective in any sense of the word!

I noticed the links below also, it appears there indeed is work out there from Non-creationists critical of evolution:

Evolution: A theory in crisis.

The way they reacted to stickers on test books challenging their worldview, you can bet they’re ready for a book burning at their next cocktail party!

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