If life started by chance, why can't we replicate it?

Question

I'm not asking if we can duplicate the original "creation" of life. I'm just surprised that we cannot duplicate life from "dead" matter. Even the simplest form of life.

Answer 1

We've started already.

A famous experiment conducted over 50 years ago showed that conditions in the early Earth's atmosphere were such that amino acids and other building blocks of life could be produced. The Miller-Urey experiment created such chemicals in just 1 week. It will just take longer to keep making progress.

Answer 2

Those early chemical experiments are part way to solving the issue but the real problem is that we only know some of the chemistry of the early earth from its geology. This means we can make some good guesses about much of what occurred but we still don’t know everything YET. More recent experiments have developed other amino acids as well as self replicating nucleic acids.

So as our knowledge gets better, so will the experiments showing the organization of chemicals into a self replicating clump of the stuff we call life. Don’t forget, we conduct our experiments in a single test tube (or flask) with a limited number of chemicals. Early earth had millions of chemicals scattered across millions of environments for millions of years before some of those chemical reactions started to come together.

Answer 3

It's just a matter of time and we will. Experiments already can create amino acids (the building blocks of life) using a lab created environment similar to what Earth was millions of years ago. Check this out:

"Cloning, move over.

The powerful and potentially dark force that would give you a "mini-me" may soon be knocked off genetic engineering's center stage by an emerging laboratory effort to create life that is decidedly not as we know it.

In two separate research efforts, scientists have altered the very nature of nature by creating cells that break a cardinal rule of biology, incorporating an entirely new basic building block into their cellular structures. It is a first step on a path of neogenesis -- the creation of alternate life forms.

In several interviews, experts said the work will help scientists study our own terrestrial evolution and also investigate how life might have developed in unknown ways on other worlds. " [See source.]

Answer 4

Well there are 2 reasons for it.
1=> Though Scientists have a great deal about Protoplasm, but still they are not able to understand the exact and complete nature of it. (The living essence of a cell is called Protoplasm) as it is very complex.
2=> Scientists are not able to duplicate the environmental conditions of the earth (under which life originated on earth ) in the lab. (These conditions include very hot & humid weather,absence of free oxygen, presence of other gases like NH3, CH4 etc. , highly electrified atmosphere etc.) but the correct composition of different gases in atmosphere is not known yet.

Answer 5

Hello? Uh, Hello? Am I chopped Liver? Haven't you read my book? Hello?

I wrote a book called the synthesis and characterization of oxidized phospholipids. In this book, I synthesized an artificial cellular membrane that mimics perfectly the human cell membrane. I included both unaltered and altered phospholipids. I proved that this system can be used to replace human cellular membranes. I did this with the intent to replace some forms of animal testing. By mimicing human cells, we can research effects on these synthets without destroying human or animal tissues.

Answer: We can replicate it. We have replicated it IN VITRO. It has already been done. We are now able to synthesize artificial life forms and their parts for testing purposes!

Answer 6

because life did not start by chance! it pains me to see that people are so misguided and arrogant not to believe in a power higher than themselves, think of all the explosions and eruptions you heard of in your life time what was the result life or distruction? is it not hard to believe that a explosion of even catostrofic magnitude could create somthing as intricate and precise as our own bodys makeup. every thing working together to support one life, all the different types of animals all having a sence of survivel and family, a freak accident cause elephants to have long memories and live in groups according to the matriarc and have a natural sence of self preservation, and the food chain just happend to put man in the top of the list by accident, we are the slowest creatures and our young cannot survive without us at all but we have the ability to reason think create and build, morn, love, anililate,feel pity, sorrow, joy,we recieve great pleasure from the opposite sex, we have the ability to change our life style, our faith, our out look on life. all these things are what we as humans can accomplish and I know that we have a higher power over us, man cannot direct his own step, however i am not saying that the big bang theory is wrong but i am saying it was orchistrated by a higher power. and that is why we cannot replicate it. man comes very close to alot of replications but like it or not we are only human. the closest man will ever come to an actual replication of life is having a child naturaly. even cloning is not really creating life it is just copying what already is.

Answer 7

I am sure we could, but it would take a million years. Actually, it happens all the time because every child that is born goes thorough the stages that the species went through in their development. Specifically:

Ontogeny is the development of the embryos of a given species; phylogeny is the evolutionary history of a species. The theory claims that the development of the embryo of every species repeats the evolutionary development of that species fully. Or otherwise put: each successive stage in the development of an individual represents one of the adult forms that appeared in its evolutionary history. Haeckel formulated his theory as such: "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". This notion later became simply known as recapitulation.

Answer 8

Nothing is by chance.Everything that happens in this universe is governed by laws therefore nothing can be random. Something may seem random but that is because we cannot understand or calculate all of the cause and effects taking place.

Answer 9

How much time do you have to replicate it? One week? 3 years? 2 billion years?

Answer 10

Why should we be able to?

It took us, what, thousands of years to master electricity and you want abiogenesis to result in life forms in under forty years?