Question: I am reading a book in which there is a discussion about a chemical experiment and I need a bit of clarification. In this experiment, Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago took a mixture of ammonia, methane, and hydrogen, shot electricity through it and found that amino acids had been formed. This proved that life could have evolved out of non-life on primitive Earth. The counterpoint offered to this is that ammonia, methane, and hydrogen were not abundant on primitive Earth but, rather, water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen dominated the atmosphere and the experiment wouldn't work with that mixture. The man who brings that up seems very confident that it invalidates the experiment.
My confusion arises because it seems to me that H2O, CO2, and N2 could be split by electricity and the resulting atoms could realign themselves to yield NH4, methane (a carbon compound), and H2. So, in my mind, the experiment is not invalid, it just skips a step.
I would very much appreciate clarification of why this is not possible.
Answer: Several points: 1. For starters, no one knows what the composition of the atmosphere was in early geological times. Harold Urey and Stanley Miller (Urey's graduate student) did the "sparking" experiments that you refer to. Many other groups, for example biologist Carl Sagan (of "billions and billions of stars fame"), subsequently performed similar experiments using different types and amounts of starting gases, different energy sources, different total pressures, and on and on. NONE OF THESE EXPERIMENTS "PROVES" THAT LIFE ON EARTH STARTED BY ANY ONE OF THESE MECHANISMS. Their results are conjectures (Conjectures in science are fine, scientists do it all the time. But do not confuse conjecture with "proof" or with "cause -----> effect" ). Conjectures are educated guesses. What these primordial atmosphere conjectures demonstrate is: It is NOT IMPOSSIBLE that life MIGHT have started by one or more of these mechanisms. That is a far weaker claim than: Life DID start by one of these mechanisms. 2. No one even knows whether there were bodies of liquid water on earth during those eons. If there was not, where and how did liquid water come to cover the majority of the surface of the earth? 3. And then there is the problem of oxygen (O2) gas. Oxygen gas is very inhospitable to small organic molecules. It tends to oxidize (read that burn) them back into CO2, N2, and H2O. But if there were no free oxygen (O2) gas, when and how did it become 20% of our atmosphere and how did these primordial life-forms survive in its presence? 4. And what about the problem of chirality? Any molecule that has a point or plane of symmetry with respect to reflection has two configurations that are un-superimposable (mirror images like a pair of gloves -- one for the left hand, and one for the right hand). If you try to put the right hand glove on the left hand it does not fit. The thumb and little finger are in the wrong places. Both of these configurations are formed in these high energy atmospheric model experiments.
Chirality: The ability of a chemical substance to exist in two mirror-image forms, each of which rotates polarized light in opposite directions.
The two configurations are distinguished by whether the molecule rotates a beam of linearly polarized light to the right (clock-wise) or to the left (anti-clock-wise). However, virtually all molecules involved in life processes (sugars, proteins, enzymes, etc.) are LEFT HANDED. The body cannot even digest the right handed forms, and in principle if you were fed a diet composed solely of the right handed forms, you could starve to death! Why did Nature choose the left handed form to create life? If both forms are produced in equal amounts (which is the case in many chemical reactions that are not sensitive to the "handed-ness" of the molecule), why aren't there two complementary life forms on earth -- one left handed and one right handed? Is this in some complicated way related to the fact that Nature chose to make the Universe out of matter, rather than anti-matter. The best current cosmology theories predict that matter and anti-matter were formed in equal amounts, but the Universe is almost all matter and anti-matter must be "created" by nuclear processes and other artificial high energy interactions.
I am not sure I clarified your concern about the primordial atmosphere, but I hope I did clarify that there are more unanswered questions than answered questions.
Vince Calder
Now here's a link that does not mention the problems with this experiment as mentioned above. Nasa Astrobiology Institute The reason I show this is because this subject is a perfect example of what science does, and how their views conflict more often than we realize. Just type in "stanley miller experiment" into any search engine, and the views on this information are all over the board. Some present this information as some sort of fact. While some present this information without listing the problems as shown above. Some list the problems but fail to mention all of them. While none of them mention that Stanley Miller cheated to get the results that he did. And most sites are well known scientific, and are respected in their field. Why would this be done? Could it be that they are trying to work on how this could happen without doing what Stanley Miller did? And that maybe if it's not brought up to often, we will forget?
Filtering of the facts:
1) In his experiment, a electrical charge had to be introduced to the substance that the building blocks of amino acids would come from. Once produced, they could not pass through this charge again. For it would destroy and tear apart the amino acid structures making them useless for life to form from them. So they were caught in a separate flask so that this would not happen. This is not a real world test. Nature has no way of protecting, or separating things in this manner.
After the building blocks formed from the electrical charge, another problem arose.
2) The formation of Tar and Carboxylic acid (above). The percentage was overwhelming and toxic to any formation of life as shown below.
3) Then you have our atmosphere. And then there is the problem of oxygen (O2) gas. Oxygen gas is very inhospitable to small organic molecules. It tends to oxidize (read that burn) them back into CO2, N2, and H2O. But if there were no free oxygen (O2) gas, when and how did it become 20% of our atmosphere and how did these primordial life-forms survive in its presence (information borrowed from above)? O2 molecules shown below. As well as the other gases perceived to have been in much higher percentages back when these amino acid building blocks of life were supposed to form.
But then Miller ran into another problem.
4) Both left handed and right handed amino acids were formed in this experiment. Life only comes from left handed amino acids. And when right handed amino acids are present, it destroys the possibility of life to form from this brew of building blocks.
Cheating to make things work?
Miller took and drained off the toxic chemicals and separated them from the amino acids. Nature has no way of doing this. Here again, a no real world test is performed to make things look like they will work in nature. Changing reality does not make a new reality just because someone wants it to be so.
There are to many variables to overcome to make the Miller experiment work. And if Miller was truthful in the beginning, this experiment would not be used as an example of how life could have came to be. And when the truth of this is made known to all who do not know about the information presented here, the excuse about it being a theory, when it was actually a lie, will make most people feel betrayed. This will be very much so because very respected well known scientist are using this as an example without all evidence presented.
When you bring up the begining of life being part of evolution. It's is a common tactic for the evolutionist to separate the begining of life into another science section (abiogenesis). But here we have evolution being said to being where life evolved form non-living material.
And now you know why the owner of this website does not believe in the theories of science. This deception, that science claims only went on in the past, goes on even today. This is just one of the latest.
Did science break the rules of the scientific method doing the Miller experiment?
Let's look at the first step of the scientific method:
Step one: First, never accept anything as true that I did not know evidently to be so; that is, carefully to avoid precipitous judgment and prejudice; and to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind with such clarity and distinctness that I would have no occasion to doubt it. http://www.lessonplans.com/sci_1.htm
The primordial soup to life evolution, also known as abiogenesis. Was already an accepted fact to make the evolution theory sound true. This made science desperate to prove that life could rise from this soup. Which means they accepted something as being true before any evidence supported it may have come to light. This made the test, and the acceptence of the test bias on several levels. In other words, the test was socially promoted even though it had no scientific merit. And the first step of the scientific method was ignored to do it.
