Stanley Miller's classic "primordial soup" experimental setup,
with a simulated ocean, lightning and broth
of hydrogen, methane, ammonia and water.
Posted on 04/08/2005 7:39:14 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates Earth in its infancy probably had substantial quantities of hydrogen in its atmosphere, a surprising finding that may alter the way many scientists think about how life began on the planet.
Published in the April 7 issue of Science Express, the online edition of Science Magazine, the study concludes traditional models estimating hydrogen escape from Earth's atmosphere several billions of years ago are flawed. The new study indicates up to 40 percent of the early atmosphere was hydrogen, implying a more favorable climate for the production of pre-biotic organic compounds like amino acids, and ultimately, life.
The paper was authored by doctoral student Feng Tian, Professor Owen Toon and Research Associate Alexander Pavlov of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics with Hans De Sterk of the University of Waterloo. The study was supported by the NASA Institute of Astrobiology and NASA's Exobiology Program.
"I didn't expect this result when we began the study," said Tian, a doctoral student in CU-Boulder's Astrobiology Center at LASP and chief author of the paper. "If Earth's atmosphere was hydrogen-rich as we have shown, organic compounds could easily have been produced."
Scientists believe Earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and geologic evidence indicates life may have begun on Earth roughly a billion years later.
"This study indicates that the carbon dioxide-rich, hydrogen-poor Mars and Venus-like model of Earth's early atmosphere that scientists have been working with for the last 25 years is incorrect," said Toon. In such atmospheres, organic molecules are not produced by photochemical reactions or electrical discharges.
Toon said the premise that early Earth had a CO2-dominated atmosphere long after its formation has caused many scientists to look for clues to the origin of life in hydrothermal vents in the sea, fresh-water hot springs or those delivered to Earth from space via meteorites or dust.
The team concluded that even if the atmospheric CO2 concentrations were large, the hydrogen concentrations would have been larger. "In that case, the production of organic compounds with the help of electrical discharge or photochemical reactions may have been efficient," said Toon.
Amino acids that likely formed from organic materials in the hydrogen-rich environment may have accumulated in the oceans or in bays, lakes and swamps, enhancing potential birthplaces for life, the team reported.
The new study indicates the escape of hydrogen from Earth's early atmosphere was probably two orders of magnitude slower than scientists previously believed, said Tian. The lower escape rate is based in part on the new estimates for past temperatures in the highest reaches of Earth's atmosphere some 5,000 miles in altitude where it meets the space environment.
While previous calculations assumed Earth's temperature at the top of the atmosphere to be well over 1,500 degrees F several billion years ago, the new mathematical models show temperatures would have been twice as cool back then. The new calculations involve supersonic flows of gas escaping from Earth's upper atmosphere as a planetary wind, according to the study.
"There seems to have been a blind assumption for years that atmospheric hydrogen was escaping from Earth three or four billion years ago as efficiently as it is today," said Pavlov. "We show the escape was limited considerably back then by low temperatures in the upper atmosphere and the supply of energy from the sun."
Despite somewhat higher ultraviolet radiation levels from the sun in Earth's infancy, the escape rate of hydrogen would have remained low, Tian said. The escaping hydrogen would have been balanced by hydrogen being vented by Earth's volcanoes several billion years ago, making it a major component of the atmosphere.
In 1953, University of Chicago graduate student Stanley Miller sent an electrical current through a chamber containing methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water, yielding amino acids, considered to be the building blocks of life. "I think this study makes the experiments by Miller and others relevant again," Toon said. "In this new scenario, organics can be produced efficiently in the early atmosphere, leading us back to the organic-rich soup-in-the-ocean concept."
In the new CU-Boulder scenario, it is a hydrogen and CO2-dominated atmosphere that leads to the production of organic molecules, not the methane and ammonia atmosphere used in Miller's experiment, Toon said.
Tian and other team members said the research effort will continue. The duration of the hydrogen-rich atmosphere on early Earth still is unknown, they said.
It only took the Earth, like, a billion years to generate life! What's wrong with these scientists?
/sarcasm
It depends on the beliefs of the observer. It's a variable. They need like minds to prove it.
They've done studies on the "Jinx in the machine". They allowed balls to drop freely though pegs. Those who believed most of the balls would land on the left side of the machine got balls on the left side of the machine. Those who believed most of the balls would land on the right side got most of the balls on the right side of the machine.
"As a man decree a thing, it will be done unto him."
This is done by waving an imaginary function to guide them.
That is NOT reality!
"Science" has not "discovered" the transition from amino acids to single cell animals.
Nor has it "discovered" the single cell animals "inventing" sex.
That is merely the ego of man filling in the gaps with fantasy.
educated guess - things tend to stay put on flat surfaces but not rounded ones . . . we're standing on something . . . it must be flat.
evidence holds up - until Magellan's crew made it around the planet in the early 1500's the theory held true as no one proved otherwise.
That was "science" . . . and it was DEAD WRONG.
"According to the greatest scientific minds, something, a conciseness, a word, had to have started it all. The rest is our own free will (that's in the Bible, too)."
It could be one particle interacting with another. The observer does not need to be a conscious entity, much less a deity. We don't actually directly observe any of this, it is just way too small, we are reading the results where the part of "observer" was played by some non-conscious part of our experiment.
Which in the sense of "how did it all start" begs the question of where the other particle came from. And the one became two and the two begat four but in the end there can be only ONE. OK, sorry I lost it for a second there.
"nor any atoms or molecules for that matter"
In this case "strong nuclear force" trumps entropy.
Wow. Good catch.
I'll take my "science" with a bit more certainty please!
1.) You suggested I was a child and I quote, "::sigh:: your blind faith is silly and petty. Talk to me once you have your fist kiss. Maybe you'll be more grown up by then."
And would that be "calling you a name" or would it be simply "insulting" to you?
"You also stated you have no inclination in studying any of this anyway as these folks are pagans, so I really have nothing more to learn from you at this point in time."
No, I have no interest in studying under people who begin research with an assumption. (The assumption that their is no God)
However, I am glad to see your last couple of posts have made more sense (and been stated more clearly) than before.
Keep on asking. Keep on questioning. You are energetic, which is good, but focus on your posts and questions. Like I said (and I'm not trying to insult you now) You remind me of me when I was younger.
Heck, last year I was writing just for writing. Throwing out things while assumign everybody followed my rationalization. I've grown alot sense then on this forum.
Conciseness does move particles. That's been "scientifically" proven. A particle doesn't move without a force. What created that force? What created the particle?
> "Science" has not "discovered" the transition from amino acids to single cell animals.
All the steps have been seen. Proto-life has been observed forming in the lab. Life itself has been assembled from non-living components.
> That is merely the ego of man filling in the gaps with fantasy.
Wrong. Filling in the gaps with fantasy would be to say something like "Some god or other did it." What's going on in this case is perfectly appropriate theorizing based on availabel evidence.
Wrong. It was Einstein. Nice try, though.
"Life itself has been assembled from non-living components."
Example?
>All the steps have been seen. Proto-life has been observed forming in the lab. Life itself has been assembled from non-living components.<
What a bunch of crap!
What are you calling "proto-life"?
And what in the heck are you referencing regarding "Life itself has been assembled from non-living components."?
"...single cell animals "inventing" sex."
A great number of single cell critters have sex. Whether they "invented" it or not, I'm glad 8^)
What's going on in this case is perfectly appropriate theorizing based on availabel evidence.
I can't believe I JUST noticed this.
Theo-rizing. or more so... Theo-ry
God's place.
"A particle doesn't move without a force."
Particles have spin. it's inherent.
Catholic Encyclopedia -Creation
"The two general biological problems connected with the Biblical cosmogony are the origin of life and the succession of organisms. Concerning both these problems all that Catholic Faith teaches is that the beginnings of plant and animal life are due in some way to the productive power of God. Whether, with St. Augustine and St. Thomas, one hold that only the primordial elements, endowed with dispositions and powers (rationes seminales) for development, were created in the strict sense of the term, and the rest of nature — plant and animal life — was gradually evolved according to a fixed order of natural operation under the supreme guidance of the Divine Administration (Harper, "Metaphysics of the School", II, 746); or whether, with other Fathers and Doctors of the School, one hold that life and the classes of living beings — orders, families, genera, species — were each and all, or only some few, strictly and immediately created by God — whichever of these extreme views he may deem more rational and better motived, the Catholic thinker is left perfectly free by his faith to select." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04470a.htm
I'm Catholic but I don't think we are alone in this view.
"Example?"
Any autotrophic organism.
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