Origins of Life
Year of Discovery: 1952
What Is It? The first laboratory re-creation of the process of originally creating life on Earth.
Who Discovered It? Stanley Miller
Why Is This One of the 100 Greatest?
One of the greatest mysteries has long been: How did life first form on this planet?
Theories abound. Bacteria not naturally found on Earth have been found in meteorites recovered in Antarctica. Possibly life here came from some other planet.
For over a hundred years, the most popular scientific theory has been that DNA molecules (life) first evolved from amino acids that were somehow spontaneously created in the
soupy chemical mix of the primordial seas. It was just a theory—albeit a popular one—until
Stanley Miller re-created the conditions of the early oceans in his lab and showed that
amino acids could, indeed, form from this chemical soup.
This was the first laboratory evidence, the first scientific discovery, to support the theory that life on Earth evolved naturally from inorganic compounds in the oceans. It has been
a cornerstone of biological sciences ever since.
How Was It Discovered?
By 1950 scientists had used a variety of methods to determine that the earth was 4.6
billion years old. However, the oldest fossil records of even tiny bacterial cells were no
older than 3.5 billion years. That meant that Earth had spun through space for over a billion
years as a lifeless planet before life suddenly emerged and spread across the globe.
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