Miller Urey Experiment Revisited

In 1953, Stanley Miller conducted his famous experiment, electrifying a mixture of gases and water, simulating the environment of early Earth. This resulted in a soupy mixture of amino acids, which are the building blocks to longer proteins. Miller’s experiment proved that organic molecules can arise from inorganic compounds. However, it was unknown what atoms and molecules were interacting and how the amino acids came about. In 2014, a group of French researchers revisited Miller’s experiment with computer simulations. They found that in the Miller experiment, the atoms formed the molecule formamide, an intermediate molecule in the formation of amino acids. This came to the surprise of the researchers, as formamide is a much more complex intermediate than formaldehyde, the intermediate originally thought to have been formed in the Miller experiment. This is interesting to me because it shows the process of how life started on Earth. As we understand more about the birth of life on planets we may begin to set our eyes elsewhere and begin to look for life starting of other planets

http://phys.org/news/2014-09-revisits-miller-urey-quantum.html

Submitted by Deven Shakya