Primordial Soup: Interview with Stanley Miller

An anonymous reader writes "Stanley Miller's classic 'primordial soup' experiments showed that 13 of the 21 amino acids necessary for life could be made in a glass flask. For its fifty-year commemoration, Miller is interviewed today and reflects on what Carl Sagan called 'the single most significant step in convincing many scientists that life is likely to be abundant in the cosmos.'"

Comments

Re:where ?

[spiny]

>YES we have soul and I cant prove it as much as you cant prove the opposite.

so that makes it true then?

a pretty weak argument if you ask me.

by the way, i am God, i can't prove it, but neither can you disprove it.

awaiting the -1 flamebait,

i thankyou.

Re:I tried this experiment in high school...sort o

[dogfart]

I had to use a chemical...damn, don't remember what it was, but it turned purple in the presence of amino acids and is used to detect fingerprints on paper.

Ninhydrin. Cool stuff. Completely colorless but turns bright purple in the presence of amino acids. A great prank was leaving trace amounts on someone's pen or something...

No surprise you got a high mark. Experiments that fail are very important in science, and understanding why they may have failed helps inform further research. The important thing about science is explaining why, not "winning the lottery"