Miller-Urey Experiment
The goal of the Miller-Urey experiment was to recreate the “primordial soup” that was the Earth's early oceans. In the atmosphere, the chemicals H2O, CH4, NH3, and H2, or water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. Electrical storms were also very common at this point in time, and Miller and Urey's goal was to recreate these circumstances as accurately as possible in order to see if life would currently form under these conditions. They set up a fairly simple contraption that would recreate the early ocean, as well as part of the water cycle and electrical storms. The basic setup was a flask filled with water over a heat source, this created water vapor, which traveled through a set of tubes and into a compartment that was filled with electricity, as well as the gases of the primitive atmosphere. The vapor then …show more content…
Of those compounds included 13 of the 22 amino acids necessary for proteins to fully form. Up to 15% of all the carbon in the previous compounds had transformed into some variety of organic compound. The water had turned a dark brown color and it seemed to be a huge success for the scientists. Although the molecules formed were very basic and in no way were an organic system, it did show that you could make the building blocks of life from the inorganic. However, there is some controversy around the experiment, as it is impossible to know the exact ratios of chemicals in the atmosphere at that time, and some believe there may have been even more hydrogen present. Lightning storms were also very common at the time, but the amount of electricity used in the experiment was far more than what could have been naturally produced. It is also important to keep in mind that this experiment was carried out in a week, not millions upon millions of years. This experiment is a very valid example of creating early organisms from nothing, but that does not mean that it is
The goal of the Miller-Urey experiment was to recreate the “primordial soup” that was the Earth's early oceans. In the atmosphere, the chemicals H2O, CH4, NH3, and H2, or water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. Electrical storms were also very common at this point in time, and Miller and Urey's goal was to recreate these circumstances as accurately as possible in order to see if life would currently form under these conditions. They set up a fairly simple contraption that would recreate the early ocean, as well as part of the water cycle and electrical storms. The basic setup was a flask filled with water over a heat source, this created water vapor, which traveled through a set of tubes and into a compartment that was filled with electricity, as well as the gases of the primitive atmosphere. The vapor then …show more content…
Of those compounds included 13 of the 22 amino acids necessary for proteins to fully form. Up to 15% of all the carbon in the previous compounds had transformed into some variety of organic compound. The water had turned a dark brown color and it seemed to be a huge success for the scientists. Although the molecules formed were very basic and in no way were an organic system, it did show that you could make the building blocks of life from the inorganic. However, there is some controversy around the experiment, as it is impossible to know the exact ratios of chemicals in the atmosphere at that time, and some believe there may have been even more hydrogen present. Lightning storms were also very common at the time, but the amount of electricity used in the experiment was far more than what could have been naturally produced. It is also important to keep in mind that this experiment was carried out in a week, not millions upon millions of years. This experiment is a very valid example of creating early organisms from nothing, but that does not mean that it is