PBS Nova fans: did we miss one?

Question

We saw episodes theorizing life on earth was "seeded" from space (meteors or such). But for us, that begs the question, how did life originate *there*? Did Nova have an episode (or does anyone know of studies in chemistry or physics) describing *scientific* theories of how life arose, *at all*, *ever*, *anywhere*?

Answer 1

The most famous experiments demonstrating how life may have developed on Earth are the Miller and Miller-Urey experiments of the 1950s that produced amino acids by putting electricty through a jar containing methane, ammonia and hydrogen. This 'pre-biotic soup' was intended to mimic the early atmosphere of the Earth. There's some major questions about how similar that atmosphere was to the Earth's atmosphere 4 billion years ago (especially the ammonia and hydrogen components), but it shows that with simple chemical compounds and an input of energy, it's quite easy to get the building blocks of proteins and other precursors necessary to create life.

For more information, check out this page http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html

Here's the Nova site talking about the same thing http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/knoll.html

And here's the transcript of the Nova episode Origins: How Life Began (from Sept 2004). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3111_origins.html

Answer 2

Be warned though, the Miller-Urey experiments are very out-dated. The science of life's origin has come a long way since the 50s.

And no, that doesn't mean I'm a creationist.