[RightWhale]

Sagan was in the middle of the origin of life research. Not central, just there. He knew all the participants, went to their conferences, fed off them. Somewhere along the line he mentioned that given a bottle with the appropriate chemicals in it and a source of energy: heat, lightning, UV, extreme pressure, whatever provides a chemical kick, the complex chemicals of life form naturally. UV wavelengths are in the key energy range to have effect on chemical bonds. All this speculation was back around the time of the Viking Mars search-for-life landers. Early 70s.

[Aric2000]

For a minute I saw Satan, not Sagan, and thought geez, what the heck is up with rightwhale? LOL ;)

Yeah, I saw some of that stuff too, he talked about it in some of his books. Very interesting reading.

[UCANSEE2]

Finally they get it right.

The first life on earth started converting what chemicals were in the air and ground into the beginnings of our atmosphere. UV light had nothing to stop it. It stimulated chemical reactions which were part of the original creation of life.

Later, a new type of creature, very similar to the first, evolved which was able to put more into the atmosphere. It had a built-in engine or furnace and was more efficient. That first creature (cell) still exists, and the second one.... Well, them are us. We are made up of the second creatures.

[plusone]

They did exactly such an experiment in the 50's. A jar was half-filled with simple liquid compounds thought to be present in the ancient, primordial sea. A mixture of a few gases above formed what they thought to be the early atmosphere. Applying an electric spark (lightening) did cause amino acids, the precursors of protein, to be formed. It was an interesting experiment, but one thing not widely reported was that the aminos had to be withdrawn from the vial as they were created, otherwise the same spark that formed them would also blast them back into their original components.

[gore3000]

Sagan was in the middle of the origin of life research. Not central, just there. He knew all the participants, went to their conferences, fed off them. Somewhere along the line he mentioned that given a bottle with the appropriate chemicals in it and a source of energy: heat, lightning, UV, extreme pressure, whatever provides a chemical kick, the complex chemicals of life form naturally.

Which only shows that Sagan was an atheist charlatan. If it was so easy, life would have been produced in a lab long ago.

[ThomasMore]

And what was the origin of the "bottle of chemicals" or the UV light for that matter?