The Origin Of Life

Researchers claim now they solved mystery behind origin of life on planet

"Origin-of-life researchers have long suggested scenarios for which set of biomolecules may have arisen first and set the stage for the others. But now chemists in the United Kingdom report new evidence that precursors for all three sets of biomolecules—nucleic acids, amino acids, and lipids—can be generated by a pair of simple compounds that would have been present on early Earth. As such, the work offers a possible way out of the paradoxes of the origin of life on Earth."

We're all just one big chemistry experiment

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth -- at least that is one version of the origin of everything that has existed since the Bronze Age."

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"An experiment to test this hypothesis was made in 1953 by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. The scientists put water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen -- all common chemicals available on the primitive Earth -- into a large flask and provided energy in the form of heat. At the conclusion of this experiment very complex chemicals including amino acids, the foundation of organic chemistry, were found in the flask.

In fact, when the sealed vials of the experiment were tested in 2007, they found more than 20 amino acids in the experiment. Life as we know it uses only 20 of these chemicals, so the experiment seemed to indicate the basic chemistry of life could arise spontaneously, given energy and time."

Origin-of-life puzzle cracked

"Origin-of-life researchers have long suggested scenarios for which set of biomolecules may have arisen first and set the stage for the others. But now chemists in the United Kingdom report new evidence that precursors for all three sets of biomolecules—nucleic acids, amino acids, and lipids—can be generated by a pair of simple compounds that would have been present on early Earth. As such, the work offers a possible way out of the paradoxes of the origin of life on Earth."