Organic-Rich Soup-in-the-Ocean of Early Earth [Miller experiment revisited]

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.

You seem to want to find an objective defense of atheism in scientific reasoning. I would point out that you offer a poor example of scientific thought in your presumption of results. True scientific thought must be open to contradictory notions. That is, you must be willing to explore a hypothesis through experimentation in order to determine whether it is tue, or whether, and please stay with me here, its opposite or complement is true.

All of your arguments provide evidence of your faith in atheism. You are, in fact, engaged in a theological debate, not a scientific one. You should reconsider your position and, more impotantly, your representation of your position as scientific, when it is not.

I admit readily and happily that I am a Christian. I am also capable of scientific reasoning. I acknowledge and embrace the plain fact that, if a scientific experiment succeeds in generating life from inorganic materials, that one of the central beliefs I hold would be under attack.

However, I have to scratch my head over your assertion: "...sensing that the "miracle" of life is soon to be created..." So, what particular "senses" lead you to conclude this? What scientific basis do you offer? Don't forget it must be an objective scientific basis, not a mere assertion peppered with ad hominum attacks. I would submit it is nothing more than wishful thinking occaisioned by your faith in atheism.

What say you?

"Interstellar space is filled with extremely tenuous clouds of gas which are mostly Hydrogen. The neutral Hydrogen atom (HI in astronomer's shorthand) consists of 1 proton and 1 electron. The proton and electron spin like tops but can have only two orientations; spin axes parallel or anti-parallel. It is a rare event for Hydrogen atoms in the interstellar medium to switch from the parallel to the anti-parallel configuration, but when they do they emit radio waves with a wavelength of 21 centimeters (about 8 inches) and a corresponding frequency of exactly 1420 MHz. Tuned to this frequency radio telescopes have mapped the neutral Hydrogen in the sky. The image, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010113.html represents such an all-sky HI survey with the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy running horizontally through the center. In this false color image no stars are visible , just diffuse clouds of gas tens to hundreds of light years across which cluster near the plane. The gas clouds seem to form arching, looping structures, stirred up by stellar activity in the galactic disk. "

Let's consider and analyse this verse:

Gen.1 [6] And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Here one may presume "waters" refers to both the primitive (hydrogen and oxygen) and the final liquid (firmament) states of water. The hydrogen ion layer is indicated as being present within the reference to "waters" from the beginning.

Finally consider these things from scripture:

Job.38
[4] Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
[5] Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
[6] Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
[7] When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Verse 5 could be telling us of that plane in our Milky Way and verse 7 plainly of the 1420 MHz radio wave frequency. If this lighter-than-air hydrogen ion layer was surrounding the earth's atmosphere in ancient days, the properties of the spin axis of hydrogen would have produced a "singing" when varying wavelengths of radiation from "the stars" bounced off, forcing the change of the proton and electron axis orientation. This layer, when ignited, could have also easily formed the water vapor necessary to trigger the "Great Flood" and just as easily been the filter necessary to keep out higher, more harmful, life-shortening radiation for prior generations. I also note the statement of man's days being shortened to "an hundred and twenty years" (Gen. 6 [3] ) after the flood and refer to the statement of "the windows of heaven were opened" (Gen. 7 [11] ). This could have been due to the depletion of the hydrogen layer which produced the deluge and allowed the higher concentrations of radiation to reach earth's surface. If this hydrogen layer had become ignited, it would have burned from the top down, not necessarily causing significant heat damage to earth, but producing trillions of cubic meters of water vapor being released into the atmosphere - hence the "Great Flood". So today's climate allows the formation of rain because the sun's radiation can reach the earth's surface in sufficient amounts to vaporize water since it isn't filtered by the former hydrogen ion layer. This holds true if you look at the densities of hydrogen ions in space relative to the ease of radiation's conductivity comparitively speaking to the atmospheric conditions where hydrogen ions are more densely located. Is it any wonder hydrogen is the most plentiful, but basic element of the universe? Notice locations of the largest coal deposits appear in mountainous valleyways - an indication that a high level flashover from the burning of hydrogen and oxygen very well may have "charcoaled" higher elevation vegetation, thus the charcoal settled into lower elevations and was subsequently covered by a sedimentary layer. There is no accurate carbon testing to date that can discredit this theory, but should the Ark Noah and his family survived on ever be found, it is highly probable the exterior would appear scorched on its outer skin.

But, that's just a theory....

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