The origin of life - Old experiment, new information

As some of you may know, in the 50's, chemist Stanley Miller performed some interesting experiments design to test the then current ideas for the origin of life.

A new analysis of Millers samples using the latest technology has revealed some interesting results.

Professor Bada points out that today, almost all volcanic eruptions are accompanied by violent electric storms. The same could have been true on the young Earth.
"What we suggest is that volcanoes belched out gases just like the ones Stanley had used, and were immediately subjected to intense volcanic lightning.
"And so each one of those volcanoes could have been a little, local prebiotic factory. And so all of that went into making the material that we refer to as the prebiotic soup."

Full article

Very interesting!

I didn't know about lightning and volcanoes.

Seems like the conditions needed to produce basic life where relatively common.

If one takes into account the number of volcanic eruptions that were present on young Earth and the number of lightening strikes that would have occurred over millions of years on or near these eruptions, then the probabilities of having the right conditions for the building blocks of life to combine to kick start evolution improves considerably!

I look forward to the scientific critique of these new results and theories

Wow. I don't have a proper response to this. I'm just glad someone finally found it. I had read something about someone creating DNA from quartz and electricity and water or something of the sort, I can't quite remember the specifics but it was definitely related to this. This is an awesome find.

S&F

No one has ever gotten one iota of evidence to support even one strand of DNA evolving from primordial soup that has been struck by some sort of energy.

Saying the the Earth is millions of years old doesn't help your 1 to the negative 50th chance of this happening either.

[edit on 16-10-2008 by PinealGlandThoth]

reply to post by panda319


Cool huh!?

I love that Prof. Bada found the long lost samples in dusty boxes in a corner ... would be like winning the lottery for a biologist ... great story.

Here is another article with more detail, reactions from other scientists and a pic of the young Miller.

www.sciam.com...

edit - actually Bada is a chemist

[edit on 16/10/08 by Horza]

Originally posted by PinealGlandThoth

Saying the the Earth is millions of years old doesn't help your 1 to the negative 50th chance of this happening either.

[edit on 16-10-2008 by PinealGlandThoth]

Where did you come up with that % from?

The chance of it happening is 100%.

Otherwise you probably wouldn't be reading this right now.

We just don't know exactly how it happened

Edit - "Chance" is the wrong word ... please insert "probability"

[edit on 16/10/08 by Horza]

Originally posted by PinealGlandThoth
No one has ever gotten one iota of evidence to support even one strand of DNA evolving from primordial soup that has been struck by some sort of energy.
[edit on 16-10-2008 by PinealGlandThoth]

Did you completely ignore the thread? They blasted gases with sparks, and then heat, producing amino acids. Heat is energy? Which pulls us closer and closer to DNA.

It's a little more complex than that but, you're disregarding all of the evidence and throwing it out the window as if it doesn't exist?

It doesn't completely state the creation of life, it just has a nice theory for how it may have happened, and it states that.

I fail to see how you think there is no evidence to support that?

And I'm pretty sure that's not the way you would state probability.

It would be One in a number. As in , 1 in 1,000 chance.

And if you're talking about 1^-50 (an exponent), 1 times itself over and over wouldn't get you anywhere.



[edit on 16-10-2008 by panda319]