[NicknamedBob]

"What always astonished me about the Miller experiment is the idea of simulating lightning (which produces millions and millions and millions of volts of electricity in just one or two seconds) by applying a small amount of continuous voltage over a period of five days."

I don't think you could prove, by a laboratory experiment, that a bolt of lightning could start a forest fire. But we know that it happens.

[js1138]

I don't think you could prove, by a laboratory experiment, that a bolt of lightning could start a forest fire. But we know that it happens.

Silly man. Laboratory experiments are intelligently designed. They can't possibly tell you anything about what happens in nature.

Besides, lightening isn't random. It's guided by Thor, or someone like that.

[mtg]

I don't think you could prove, by a laboratory experiment, that a bolt of lightning could start a forest fire. But we know that it happens.

Actually, when a bolt of lightning does start a forest fire, the forest becomes the laboratory. So your statement makes little, if any, sense.