Prebiotic Soup--Revisiting the Miller Experiment [biogenesis]

Science Magazine ^ | May 2003 | Jeffrey L. Bada and Antonio Lazcano

[PatrickHenry]

Technically, the subect of life's origin isn't part of the theory of evolution (which applies only after life exists), but it's a related topic. Everybody be nice.

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[farmfriend]

ping

[ChemistCat]

Awesome post. I will have to read it in detail late. I'm studying this topic now.

[Ogmios]

I believe that if they run experiments that closely resemble what the smokestacks at the ocean floors are like, they might come up with some better luck.

The heat, the pressure, the chemicals etc.

I am seeing a lot of study around the smokestacks now, and I believe that if an experiment like Millers was done with these conditions, things may become clearer.

[CobaltBlue]

The first time I read the term "Intelligent Design," what I imagined it could be, without knowing more, was that somehow DNA was as inevitable a result for amino acids as fractals were for crystaline structures.

Turned out not to be such a completely idiotic notion.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[PatrickHenry]

The Probability of Abiogenesis . Discussion of life's origins, statistics, etc.

[Prof Engineer]

ping

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks for the pings. Intersting read. :-)

[I got the rope]

Interesting that the problem of chiral amino acids has not been brought up yet. This woman's work is interesting. She has gone beyond the Urey-Miller experiment and has made self-replicating peptid chains.

[PatrickHenry]

Very interesting. Self-replicating molecules, created in the lab. Good link.

[PatrickHenry]

Someone is almost sure to drop in and claim that Louis Pasteur "proved" that life can't be created from non-living material. This is a mis-understanding of the ancient term spontaneous generation. This website: The Slow Death of Spontaneous Generation, explains what Pasteur actually did: he demonstrated that meat spoiled because of airborn microbes, not "spontaneously" by itself.

[nvskibum]

This article triggered a great wave of nostalgia. Back in 1971, a high school buddy and I attempted to replicate the Miller experiment with a glass apparatus built to our specifications by the local college chemistry department. More than once we almost blew up my garage sparking the methne gas in the mixture with electrodes attached to a Neon sign transformer (10,000 volt+), because of persistent air leaks in our apparatus. But it nevertheless was a "blast".

My buddy went on to a Chem degree from Caltech, but I never touched science again save for reading popularized accounts. But the implications of this simple experiment were profound, even to a public high school kid in 1971.

[BiffWondercat]

What about the chemistry of 'black smokers' and geothermal vents in the deep oceans?

[PatrickHenry]

What a difference a day makes.

[f.Christian]

[f.Christian]

[LiteKeeper]

Did Scientists create life...or did media create hype?

[Prodigal Son]

Self-replicating molecules, created in the lab.

Interesting choice of words.