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Comment by rdtsc

8 hours ago

> Demonstrate the emergence of life from chemical precursors in a laboratory setting

Wait, isn’t this an already solved problem? I remember in the 90s school books (material written in the 80s-70s likely) it was presented as “so and so did electric discharges in an atmospheric gas mixtures and they got organic molecules” therefore the origins of life is solved. I remember thinking how cool that was. I guess the “therefore” step was sort of a lie if it’s still an open problem…

4 comments

rdtsc

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ricksunny  6 hours ago

Science was presented in a just-so way in our youth. It still is ( #Scicomms ), but back then, whether reading Junior Scholastic or the margin captions of a high school science textbook handed down ex cathedra, there was no communication pathway to pose vexing questions in a publicly visible way as we do now.

We don't even know if Miller or Urey themselves would have (or did) frame their results that way. The honest framing is 'hey this is one way to form amino acids, and maybe that pathway is reflective of the origin of life, but that supposition remains conjecture on our part.'

Metacelsus  7 hours ago

You're thinking of the Miller-Urey experiment. They got some biomolecules (amino acids, etc) but definitely not life

  • rdtsc  6 hours ago

    Yeah that's the one. Just looked it up it was it the early 1950s. I guess I was either too impressionable or the textbook and/or teacher cut a few corners because I remember it being presented as "we solved the origins of life already" situation.