Abiogenesis: Toward a New Understanding

I am not a scientist though I sometimes play one online.

Having given that disclaimer…I found this article interesting.

For life to “emerge” the amino acid building blocks of life needed to be present and there had to be a “place” for those building blocks to come together. Over the years I have heard this happened in a “primordial ooze” or possibly even between plates of mica.

But after completing a 25 year long “science project” Stanley Miller has proposed another possible explanation: It happened in ice.

From the article:

Miller had filled the vial in 1972 with a mixture of ammonia and cyanide, chemicals that scientists believe existed on early Earth and may have contributed to the rise of life. He had then cooled the mix to [ –108 degrees Fahrenheit]…

[Over 25 years] the mixture of ammonia and cyanide, normally colorless, had deepened to amber…the color of complex polymers made up of organic molecules…Over a quarter-century, the frozen ammonia-cyanide blend had coalesced into the molecules of life: nucleobases, the building blocks of RNA and DNA, and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

Check out the entire article here.

---

I’ve joined Full Tilt Blogging–and if you want to have more fun, make more friends and even make money blogging, you need to check this out. (Click the book for details…)

Tags: Abiogenesis, Creation, DNA, Evolution, Origin of Life, RNA, Stanley Miller