I find this very interesting, partly because I recreated Stanley Miller’s famous experiment for my high school science fair. It brings back fond memories of basement science projects. – Anthony
Primordial soup gets spicier
‘Lost’ samples from famous origin of life researcher could send the search for Earth’s first life in a new direction
Stanley Miller gained fame with his 1953 experiment showing the synthesis of organic compounds thought to be important in setting the origin of life in motion. Five years later, he produced samples from a similar experiment, shelved them and, as far as friends and colleagues know, never returned to them in his lifetime.
More 50 years later, Jeffrey Bada, Miller’s former student and a current Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego professor of marine chemistry, discovered the samples in Miller’s laboratory material and made a discovery that represents a potential breakthrough in the search for the processes that created Earth’s first life forms.
Former Scripps undergraduate student Eric Parker, Bada and colleagues report on their reanalysis of the samples in the March 21 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Miller’s 1958 experiment in which the gas hydrogen sulfide was added to a mix of gases believed to be present in the atmosphere of early Earth resulted in the synthesis of sulfur amino acids as well as other amino acids. The analysis by Bada’s lab using techniques not available to Miller suggests that a diversity of organic compounds existed on early planet Earth to an extent scientists had not previously realized.
“Much to our surprise the yield of amino acids is a lot richer than any experiment (Miller) had ever conducted,” said Bada.
The new findings support the case that volcanoes — a major source of atmospheric hydrogen sulfide today — accompanied by lightning converted simple gases into a wide array of amino acids, which are were in turn available for assembly into early proteins.
Bada also found that the amino acids produced in Miller’s experiment with hydrogen sulfide are similar to those found in meteorites. This supports a widely-held hypothesis that processes such as the ones in the laboratory experiments provide a model of how organic material needed for the origin of life are likely widespread in the universe and thus may provide the extraterrestrial seeds of life elsewhere.
Successful creation of the sulfur-rich amino acids would take place in the labs of several researchers, including Miller himself, but not until the 1970s.
“Unbeknownst to him, he’d already done it in 1958,” said Bada.
Miller’s initial experiments in the 1950s with colleague Harold Urey used a mixture of gases such as methane, ammonia, water vapor and hydrogen and electrically charged them as lightning would. The experiment, which took place in a closed chamber meant to simulate conditions on early Earth, generated several simple amino acids and other organic compounds in what became known as “primordial soup.”
With the gases and electrical energy they produce, many geoscientists believe the volcanoes on a young planet covered much more extensively by water than today’s served as oases of raw materials that allowed prebiotic matter to accumulate in sufficient quantities to assemble into more complex material and eventually into primitive life itself. Bada had already begun reanalyzing Miller’s preserved samples and drawing conclusions about the role of volcanoes in sparking early life when he came across the previously unknown samples. In a 2008 analysis of samples left from Miller’s more famous experiment, Bada’s team had been able to detect many more amino acids than his former mentor had thanks to modern techniques unavailable to Miller.
Miller, who became a chemistry professor at UCSD in 1960, conducted the experiments while a faculty member at Columbia University. He had collected and catalogued samples from the hydrogen sulfide mix but never analyzed them. He only casually mentioned their existence late in his life and the importance of the samples was only realized shortly before his death in 2007, Bada said. It turned out, however, that his 1958 mix more closely resembled what geoscientists now consider early Earth conditions than did the gases in his more famous previous experiment.
“This really not only enhances our 2008 study but goes further to show the diversity of compounds that can be produced with a certain gas mixture,” Bada said.
The Bada lab is gearing up to repeat Miller’s classic experiments later this year. With modern equipment including a miniaturized microwave spark apparatus, experiments that took the elder researcher weeks to carry out could be completed in a day, Bada said.
Parker, now a student at Georgia Tech, led the study. Co-authors include H. James Cleaves from the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington D.C.; Jason P. Dworkin, Daniel P. Glavin and Michael P. Callahan of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; Andrew D. Aubrey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif. and Antonio Lazcano of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography: scripps.ucsd.edu
Scripps News: scrippsnews.ucsd.edu
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pwl says:
March 24, 2011 at 2:48 pm
The currently well known laws of physics actually prevent the alleged god(s) from existing or operating in the universe. Blame Einstein. Damned Speed of Light Limit prevents any and all omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, but most importantly of all prevents any and all omnibenevolence aka omnievil from occurring as it takes a lot of time for information, matter or energy to travel and all those “omni*” capabilities would need to violate the laws of Nature for them to work.
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Which “well known” laws of physics are you referring to? General Relativity is a theory that’s superseded Newton’s Law of Gravitation. Whereas the speed of gravity under Newton’s law is infinite, under GR it’s a space-time distortion that can only travel at light speed.
Space-time was created in the Big Bang. To ask questions like “What occurred before the Big Bang?” or “What does space-time expand into?” is as meaningless as asking “What’s north of the North Pole?” (or “What’s south of the South Pole?”), “What’s on the other side of a Mobius Strip?”, or “How do you empty a Klein Bottle?”
However, if there was a creator of space-time, then its existence wouldn’t depend on space-time. Attempting to restrict that creator’s properties to those that restrict us as space-time creatures doesn’t follow.
Jim
Many of the agruments are the usual ‘scinece versus religion” ones, but are those really apposed, lets look:
“Gen 1:11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation”
Note what it does not say, it does not say “and God waved his magic want and plants appeared out of nowhere”. No, instead, it says the land produced vegatation, thus, it was a land/earth/world(ly) (alternative translations of the word) event, ie, a natural event, one not breaking natural, or earthly, law.
In short, the bible does not deny evolution, in fact, it demands it.
It then goes on to show the order things evolved after that, plants, then fish (starting with godzillions of tribolites) and birds (dinosaurs), then later “livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals” ie mammels, and after that mankind. Once again, we see it not denying evolution, but agreeing with every fassil we now know. The only place we see anything out of the ordinary is where it goes into detail about the creation of mankind, which makes sense when you think about it, if sentient creatures have souls that go to God, yet they evolve that way slowly, what do you do with the half sentient creatures?
In fact, the only problem with evolution is …science. Yes, they have been able to make a few simple (not all left handed as required) amino acids, yet the path from that to actual life has so many difficulties that they have given up on that route and switched to “something like RNA” (never actually described, lots of vigorous handwaving here), and even down that route there is no real noticable success, just more handwaving. Thus, the people who SHOULD be arguing FOR evolution are the “religious” people, and the ones against it should be the “scientists”. And a fine kettle of fish THAT would be!
Thus, we see that it appears that something so fraught with difficulties if it happens by random chance that it is impossible in this universe or any conceivable universe happened anyway.
But wait, there’s more! This sin’t the first time something like this has happened, there is also the big bang. Here is what must happen for a big bang to produce a universe with the natural alws we see all around us (describing possible universes and the chance of getting one like this one):
“The vast majority of the space consists of states which are macroscopically “dead de Sitter;” that is, nearly empty de Sitter containing only some thermal radiation. A tiny subset of the states are anthropically acceptable, meaning that they contain complex structures such as stars and galaxies, and a very small subset of those are macroscopically indistinguishable from our universe (labeled MIFOU in the figure). Inflationary initial conditions occupy an even smaller fraction of the space. Trajectories which pass through the inflationary patch will almost always lead immediately to the MIFOU region, “mixing” into it in a “porous,” phase-space-area-preserving manner. The vast majority of the points in the MIFOU region did not come from inflation, but rather from unstable trajectories originating in the dead region. Finally, any trajectory in the dead region will remain there almost all of the time, but will occasionally enter the anthropically acceptable region, and very much more rarely the MIFOU region, and almost never the inflationary region. Therefore, livable universes are almost always created by fluctuations into the “miraculous” states discussed above.”
8.Dyson, L., M. Kleban, and L. Susskind. 2002. Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant. Reprint from arXiv.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0208/0208013v3.pdf
In other words, this entire universe appears to be almost as improbale as the creation if life from non living matter. It has forced many scientists (such as Hawkins) to belief in an infinite number of universes, for which there is not the slightest evidence. We thus have “religious” people believing in something based on life, the universe, and everything (yes, I hadda do it) and ‘scientists” believing something based entirely on blind faith.
It appears therefore that both the creation of this universe, and of life, are what I would call “natural miracles”, that is, not a classic miricle, where natural laws are abviously broken, but a “miricle” that reguires a LOT more finess, where you do it anyway WITHOUT breaking any natural laws. In other words, God took a whole bunch of coins, all with heads and tails, of all different sizes and colors, threw them up in the “air” and they then bounced and rolled around the universe for about 9 billion years, all arriving at the same place at the same time, all landing heads up, and, oh yes, also happening to form a picture of the Mona Lisa. He did this, not by “cheating” (breaking natural laws, like grabbing the coint and placing it heads up) or by “random chance” (since this is statistically impossible), but by shear skill in coin flipping. There doesn’t seem to be any other way these things could have happened.
This is not to say that miricles (breaking antural law) are impossible. The usual argument against miricles goes like this (the first two always unstated assumptions are in perenthesis):
(We know that there is not god.)
(Therefore we know that miricles are impossible)
Since miricles are impossible, we know they did not happen.
Since they did not happen, there is no god.
(This is called circular reasoning.)
The only way to know if they are possible is, dare I say it, the same way you know if, say, AGW is true, look at the evidence. Did people witness it, is there some evidence of it after the fact, etc. In other words, if it actually DID happen, then it is, of course, possible.
My conclusion for all this is that you “religious” people and you “scientific” peaple are both on the wrong side. You should switch side and NOW you can fight! Although exactly what you will now be fighting about eludes me.
“Space-time was created in the Big Bang. To ask questions like “What occurred before the Big Bang?” or “What does space-time expand into?” is as meaningless as asking “What’s north of the North Pole?” (or “What’s south of the South Pole?”), “What’s on the other side of a Mobius Strip?”, or “How do you empty a Klein Bottle?””
The big bang is also a theory.
What if the universe is as old as its creator? Why would on omnipotent creator have hesitated for half of eternity?
“However, if there was a creator of space-time, then its existence wouldn’t depend on space-time.
The big bang theory may be another of our attempts to “humanize” the universe with a beginning and an end. Interestingly, an infinite universe would have no center of gravity and thus would not be subject to an eventual collapse or a “big chill”.
” Attempting to restrict that creator’s properties to those that restrict us as space-time creatures doesn’t follow.”
Well said.
If the idea of an infinite universe makes one feel uncomfortably small, he may draw comfort knowing that all things, including himself, are halfway between the infinite and the infinitesimal.
Along the same lines….how long is a moment?
Well, we’re sure having fun now that the killjoys have exited the party. Indeed, how do we know that existence isn’t just a relatively lucid dream? Or, that our universe isn’t a molecule in some giant’s fingernail? A lot of us used to argue things like that in college with the help of certain substances…
Or, in philosophy class. I finally got so annoyed with it, I wrote in my final essay something along the lines of, “this is all useless. You just go and you do and you be.” It was a bit longer, and criticized some of the more intense naval gazing we had been subjected to in rather more detail than I can remember. But, I got an A!
Years later, someone told a joke which reminded me of it all, which you’ve no doubt heard and winced at: