The Primordial Soup Hypothesis

There is loads we know about living things on our planet, about us walking-talking humans or the weird and wonderful creatures that swim in the seas and soar through the air but we still don’t know for sure…where it all came from! The story begins over 3,500 million years ago and ends today, with you reading this! How did life begin? It is the job of those who study life to try and figure this one out, and after many years of trying there are some brilliant ideas.

The origin of life on Earth is a fundamental scientific question, but we do not know as much as many biology textbooks would like you to believe. (Pigliucci)

Describe the important chemistry of early earth and how this may have given rise to life forms.

It is not known how life came to be on the earth, but it is proven that it has evolved over time, and life is unified by a common ancestor. In the 1920s, a hypothesis was created by scientists Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane, that predicted that the first life forms were formed in an acidic primordial sea. Oparin believed that a string of of chemical reactions within an aquatic environment had led to the formation of coacervates. Coacervates are aggregates of organic polymers that have life like characteristics, but are not alive. When Oparin created coacervates, he used a couple different solutions of macromolecules to form these aggregates, and he discovered that the coacervates had a selectively permeable membrane.

1) What are the three lines of fossil evidence that point to an early origin of life on Earth? Discuss each line and what it tells us about when life arose. What are the implications of an early origin for the possibility of life elsewhere?

The reigning question that ponders the minds of many individuals is “How did all life on Earth Begin”? A simple question, yet it exceeds all possibilities of theorized responses. Biologist, Charles Darwin conducted the Theory of Evolution, in which he states that all life on Earth has a common ancestor and has descended with modification through the process of natural selection. Natural selection occurs when two mates produce offspring, and through this process many subdividers are introduced, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, gene flow, and mutations that each affect the size of a species population.

The following report is on the different hypotheses developed on the topic of the Origin of Life. It will include six of the created hypotheses: Primordial Soup, Iron-Sulfur, Deep Sea Vent, RNA World, Community Clay, and Panspermia. It will explain who came up with each hypothesis, when it was created, their claim, evidence supporting their claim, identification of testing-if any-of the hypothesis, and reasoning for making their hypothesis. All sources used came from the worldwide web. What may be interesting is that all hypotheses differ with how they believe life started and the evidence supporting it. But some are closely connected to each other In conclusion, most, or even all, of these hypotheses may be incorrect on how the world came to be. Having no witnesses present during the beginning of time, no one is really sure of the actual circumstances of prehistoric Earth. However, all claims are logical and are convincing hypotheses for the origin of biomolecules.

This chapter Lovelock was explaining the history of the development of the Gaia theory. It began in September of 1965 when he read a non-significant paper than no one paid attention to. This was at a time when “New Age” fads were in so many scientists discredited the Gaian theory as just part of the New Age movement and not as real science. A few years later in 1970, Lovelock met with Lynn Margulies who fought the battle for endosymbiont hypothesis that states that all life originated from microorganisms. This meeting led Lovelock to come into contact with many of the scientists who later disagreed with the Gaian theory. Scientists such as Kasting, Hayes, and Walker believed that the regulation of the Earth needed no explanation by the Gaian

In this environment rich with iron-sulfur minerals, this serves prebiotic chemistry in multiple ways. One, it serves as an energy and electron source, and allows complex surface reaction systems. Scientists Huber and Wachtershauser tested the theory that high pressures facilitate polymerization reactions, aren’t good under the diluted primordial soup conditions, by them forming dipeptides from amino acids with minerals at normal

Russian Chemist A.I. Oparin and English Geneticist J.B.S. Haldane were the first scientists involved and conceived the Primordial Soup Hypothesis. It was developed in the year 1924. These scientists claimed that the building blocks of the life came from one simple molecule that was formed from the atmosphere (without oxygen) and was called “organic soup”. Now,evidence suggests that the first organisms were autotrophs. Two new scientists, Chemists Stanley Miller and Physicist Harold Urey, did a famous experiment 30 years later in 1950. Their experiment consisted of mixing gases to present primitive earth. the gases used

The primordial soup hypothesis is a hypothesis that was identified by a Russian chemist named Oparin and an English genetics, Haldin in the year 1920. The hypothesis explains that life began in a pond or an ocean from a combination of chemicals from the atmosphere. The two scientists thought that that the basic building blocks of life came from a simple molecule that was formed in the atmosphere. Evidence that they used to create this hypothesis was that they observed a molecule that was energized by lightning and rain from the atmosphere that created organic soup. The reason why they had to prove their assumption was because the amino acids had to become protein in order for different gasses in the atmosphere to be contained then those used

Life has continually perplexed and fascinated individuals since the dawn of mankind. The subject’s complexity is so great even over the course of human existence only a minute fraction of its mysteries have been unraveled. A phenomenon which has always intrigued scientists is the origin of life on Earth, and in recent years significant advancements have been made in the understanding of this enigma. This essay will briefly outline two theories regarding life’s origin on Earth to further comprehend why an explanation for this phenomenon has been so difficult to reach.

Urey and Millers experiment showed organic compounds such as amino acids, which are crucial to cellular life. The experimentation begins firstly with a hypothesis, which Urey and Miller used to thoroughly test the hypothetical conditions present on early earth and tested to see what the environmental required to allow life on Earth to begin. The At the end of one week of continuous operation, Miller and Urey observed, by looking at the cooled water, that as much as 10-15% of the carbon within the system was now in the form of organic compounds. 2% of the carbon had formed amino acids, including 13 of the 22 that are used to make proteins in living cells, with glycine as the most abundant. The molecules produced were simple organic molecules, far from a complete living biochemical system.

Abstract- All of these hypotheses explain the formation of creatures, earth, the universe and basically just formation have life. The primordial soup may have been amazing but it most likely didn’t include all have the compounds found in modern living systems/situations. So in all have this, we all may have different opinions about how the earth was formed but it is what it is. All of the biomolecules, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids and glucose all have an act in these hypotheses. The same goes for organic compounds.

One of the main theories is that life started by chemical means in a rock where water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen were all present then with the added effect of lightening simple organic molecules formed the building blocks of life. There was an experiment that was conducted in 1953 by Miller and Urey that supports that the conditions above could stimulate organic compounds to form. *copied “ The Miller-Urey experiment attempts to recreate the chemical conditions of the primitive Earth in the laboratory, and synthesized some of the building blocks of life.