Quote:
Originally Posted by khfreek
I learned in biology last year that the creation of the first amino acids had something to do with lightning hitting some particles, but I'll be damned if I can't remember what the actual experiment to test that theory was (toretorden, any ideas?). Point is, amino acids were pretty lucky, but this planet's perfect conditions is the real fluke.
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Yup, you're probably thinking of Stanley Miller and Harold Ureys experiment from the 50s. At the start of the experiment, they had an isolated environment with water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen in and added some heating, cooling and electrical sparks, conditions they thought would have been present on the early earth. At the start of the experiment, all the carbon was in the methane. After running the experiment for a while, evaporating and subsequently cooling water, zapping it etc, a significant portion of that carbon was found in new organic molecules such as amino acids, sugars and lipids proving that such molecules can form from basic, inorganic "ingredients" under such conditions.