HOW life on Earth began is a question that keeps people up nights. Without
the answer, we’re somehow doomed to stay rootless.
Not surprisingly, it’s inspired some astonishing experiments and theories.
Back in the 1950s, for example, at the University of Chicago, Stanley Miller had
a go at recreating the early Earth’s atmosphere in a jar. Not having any
lightning to hand, he passed a high voltage through the jar—and produced
amino acids. Here was evidence of how biological molecules could have been
created on a barren Earth.
Unfortunately, getting from this clutch of amino acids to an organism…
