Did Volcanoes Spark Life on Earth?

A once-discarded idea about how life started on our planet has been given a new life of its own, thanks to a serendipitous find.

The story traces back to the early 1950s, when chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago in Illinois tried to recreate the building blocks of life under conditions they thought resembled those on the young Earth. The duo filled a closed loop of glass chambers and tubes with water and different mixes of hydrogen, ammonia, and methane--gases presumed at the time to be the main constituents of the atmosphere billions of years ago. Then, in an attempt to confirm a hypothesis that lightning may have triggered the origin of life, they zapped the mixture with an electrical current. The researchers then analyzed the gunk that began to collect after a few hours.

The residue contained traces of some of the amino acids that make up proteins. Their presence suggested that the molecular precursors of life could form through a simple electrochemical process. The problem was that theoretical models and analyses of ancient rocks eventually convinced scientists that Earth's earliest atmosphere was not rich in hydrogen.

Last year, after Miller's death, two of his former graduate students--geochemists Jim Cleaves of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) in Washington, D.C., and Jeffrey Bada of Indiana University, Bloomington--were examining samples left in their mentor's lab. They discovered the vials of products from the original experiment and decided to take a second look with updated technology. Using extremely sensitive mass spectrometers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Cleaves, Bada, and colleagues found traces of 22 amino acids in the experimental residues. That is about double the number originally reported by Miller and Urey and includes all of the 20 amino acids found in living things, the scientists report tomorrow in Science.

So could lightning have helped jump-start life on Earth? Possibly, Cleaves says. Although Earth's primordial atmosphere was not hydrogen-rich, as were the chambers in the Miller-Urey experiment, gas clouds from volcanic eruptions did contain the right combination of molecules. It is possible that volcanoes, which were much more active early in Earth's history, seeded our planet with life's ingredients. The big question is what happened next--how did those molecules turn into self-replicating organic compounds? "That's the frontier," Cleaves says, "and we're sort of stuck there."

The new study "highlights how easy it is to make the building blocks of life in plausible prebiotic conditions," says geochemist Robert Hazen of CIW, who was not involved in the research. At the same time, he says, the findings reinforce "the pioneering insight and experiments of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey."

It’s ironic to me the the smartest people on earth don’t get it when God took the time to write the answers down in a book for them.

It is because they believe they know better than God.

They insist on rejecting Him.

They want to be god.

The Miller/Urey Experiment
Cruising Chemistry
...There has been a recent wave of skepticism concerning Miller's experiment because it is now believed that the early earth's atmosphere did not contain predominantly reductant molecules. Another objection is that this experiment required a tremendous amount of energy. While it is believed lightning storms were extremely common on the primitive Earth, they were not continuous as the Miller/Urey experiment portrayed. Thus it has been argued that while amino acids and other organic compounds may have been formed, they would not have been formed in the amounts which this experiment produced.

Many of the compounds made in the Miller/Urey experiment are known to exist in outer space. On September 28, 1969, a meteorite fell over Murchison, Australia. While only 100 kilograms were recovered, analysis of the meteorite has shown that it is rich with amino acids. Over 90 amino acids have been identified by researchers to date. Nineteen of these amino acids are found on Earth. (table showing comparison of Murchison meteorite to Miller/Urey experiment) The early Earth is believed to be similar to many of the asteroids and comets still roaming the galaxy. If amino acids are able to survive in outer space under extreme conditions, then this might suggest that amino acids were present when the Earth was formed. More importantly, the Murchison meteorite has demonstrated that the Earth may have acquired some of its amino acids and other organic compounds by planetary infall.

Miller-Urey Experiment
Davi Darling
...After a day of continuous operation, Miller and Urey found a thin layer of hydrocarbons on the surface of the water. After about a week of operation, a dark brown scum had collected in the lower flask and was found to contain several types of amino acids, including glycine and alanine, together with sugars, tars, and various other unidentified organic chemicals.

miller urey

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If I were to take a BLT sandwich and expose it to lightning how long would it take to create life? Surely a BLT contains most if not all of the building blocks of life.

If the creation of life can be traced to one event where the building blocks were lined up just right by some force. Why hasn’t the formation of life been repeated in nature in the billions of succeeding years when the building blocks were much more prevalent?

“These experiments support the hypothesis that a biochemistry based on RNA alone preceded the familiar biochemistry based on nucleic acids and proteins.”

In that the only difference between DNA & RNA is that the backbone sugars (Ribose)is only different than the sugar deoxyribose of DNA in that it (deoxyribose) is missing an oxygen at the 2’ position and that the nitrogenous base Uracil is substitued for Thymine found in DNA. That doesn’t surprise me at all.

However, the original questions was about the zapped methane, hydrogen, and ammonia in the old experiment in the 50s that produced amino acids.

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