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

Land Sharks

[Scoria]

showed that 13 of the 21 amino acids necessary for life could be made in a glass flask

Of course, certain products of his experiments often indicate that not all of them are necessary. These products are, of course, "intellectual property lawyers." :-)

I tried this experiment in high school...sort of

[Saint Aardvark]

I tried duplicating Miller's experiment in my last year of high school for my chemistry final project. I didn't have a way of zapping the gases, so I tried shining a UV lamp on them; I'd read about different versions of the experiment that had tried that with success. And I didn't have a way of evaporating and condensing the liquids, so I just poured 'em into a big jar and hoped the interface between liquid and gas, combined with whatever UV light made it through the glass, would make amino acids. And I didn't have a gas chromatograph, so 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.

It hardly needs saying, but in a week I didn't make any amino acids I could detect. Nevertheless, I ended up getting a shockingly high mark because I'd written up every possible reason I could think of for the experiment failing: not enough time, not enough interaction between liquid and gas, not enough energy from the light, test wasn't sensitive enough, Miller had faked his results (ha!), etc. I was disappointed in the results, but pretty happy with my mark. :-)

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Primordial Recipe: Spark and Stir
Date Wednesday, May 14 @ 00:48:06
Topic Extrasolar Life

No single experiment, according to Carl Sagan, has done more to convince scientists that life is 'likely abundant in the cosmos' than the work fifty years ago by then graduate student, Stanley Miller. This week celebrates his milestone publication, and Astrobiology Magazine interviewed him about his work and reflections today.
Primordial Recipe: Spark and Stir
by Astrobiology Magazine staffwriter

Fifty years ago on May 15, 1953, a University of Chicago graduate student, Stanley Miller, published a landmark two-page paper in Science magazine. He considered if amino acids could be made from what was known about the early Earth's atmosphere. Could the building blocks of life be cooked up?

"... some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity etc...", Charles Darwin, on the origins of life in tidal pools
Credit:Smithsonian

Miller began his paper:

"The idea that the organic compounds that serve as the basis of life were formed when the earth had an atmosphere of methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen instead of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen and water was suggested by Oparin and has been given emphasis by Urey and Bernal. In order to test this hypothesis..."

When Miller first presented his experimental findings to a large seminar, it is reported that at one point, Enrico Fermi politely asked if it was known whether this kind of process could have actually taken place on the primitive Earth. Harold Urey, Stanley's research advisor, immediately replied, saying 'If God did not do it this way, then he missed a good bet'. The seminar ended amid the laughter and, as the attendees filed out, some congratulated Stanley on his results.

Although Miller had submitted his paper in mid-December 1952, one reviewer did not believe the results and delayed its publication until May 15th. Later Carl Sagan would do many experiments varying the chemical percentages, but described the Miller-Urey experiments as "the single most significant step in convincing many scientists that life is likely to be abundant in the cosmos."
Early Earth: Flash in a Flask
Even today, only a few definitive things are known about what the Earth might have been like four billion years ago. It is thought that the early sun radiated only 70 percent of its modern power. No free oxygen could be found in Earth's atmosphere. The rocky wasteland lacked life. Absent were viruses, bacteria, plants and animals. Even the temperature itself is uncertain, since three schools of thought today maintain that the Earth could have been alternatively frozen, temperate or steamy.

Charles Darwin imagined life springing from a temperate world, with small ponds or runoff channels. Compared to diluted chemistry in a vast ocean, repeated evaporation and refilling have possible advantages, to find just the right concentrations somewhere so that biochemistry could begin. Glaciers, volcanoes, geysers and cometary debris potentially resupplied this primordial pond with both energy and more complex organic compounds. That is a scenario requiring relatively temperate starting conditions, and more extreme possibilities are also in the mix.

If the early Earth was a cauldron of volcanic activity, then seepage of acidic gases and heating might have circulated vital compounds to the surface. These vents may have been underwater, and precursors to biochemistry like acetic acid may have become reactive in combination with carbon monoxide. Alternatively, if the early Earth lacked any greenhouse of blanketing carbon dioxide, life could still have begun in a ball of ice. When combined with water, even a thin atmosphere of organics (formaldehyde, cyanide and ammonia) can create some building blocks of life (such as the amino acid, glycine). Thawing this 'snowball Earth' could then be triggered by a chance collision with large comets or meteors.

Terrestrial options for ea

Miller's Aide

[Joe the Lesser]

Miller had an unknown aide during this project. He spent a lot of time working with the fledgling life forms as they formed a society and culture. They became to see him as a God, and worship him.

One fateful day, they managed to shrink the aide using a debigulator device, so he could lead their civilization. When he demanded they unshrink him, they were indeed astounded by the very notion of a re-bigulator device.

True story.

Pepto to the rescue

[tundog]

I stopped eating primordial soup because the amino acids keep giving me heartburn.

another interview

[AbdullahHaydar]

from October 1996: Exobiology interview

On a related note: exobiology vs astrobiology? which do people prefer? (The definitions are in the links)

High School Biology Class

[Schezar]

For two years, I bugged my Biology teachers to let my try the Miller experiment with the school's equipment. (Of course, I was the same one who wanted them to let me make a gauss rifle, a betatron, and potato gun...)

I remember being fascinated when I first heard of the experiment. It seemed so 'important,' despite the fact that they brushed right over it and no one else in my classes understood or cared.

Of course, now I'm in college, and I can try all of these things with my own equipment.

Miller-Ade

[Damek]

Mmmm... Miller-Ade...

Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids...

[leonbrooks]

...broke down as fast as they were made (in a carefully customised device, not in the wild), and were completely racemised at formation? Or that no evidence of a reducing atmosphere exists?

Just like every other fairy tale: exciting, adventurous, believable, and wrong.

Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids...

[j0ehill]

Of course it didn't prove anything, but it was a first faltering step at least toward understanding how life might have originally began.

Aren't we now seeing some evidence that certain precursors to single cell life are formed around thermal vents on the ocean floor?

Carl Sagan aside, didn't Millers experiment rise above the level of fairy tale at the very least? Possible, but not probable, I agree, but it does have some significance in the search for an answer, at least to me as an armchair scientist.

Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids...

[Anonymous Coward]

The significant thing is that Miller was able to produce amino acids in the first place. leonbrooks is using the classic fundamentalist creationist tactic of taking a scientific success and portraying it as a failure because the experiment did not meet 100% of the artificial requirements that he has generated for it.

This is the same thought process that causes them to say "Evolution can't possibly be true because there is a missing link between species A and species C," and then when species B is discovered, they say "Aha! Now you have even bigger problems, because there is no link between A and B, and B and C!" :-)

Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids...

[Bowling Moses]

..broke down as fast as they were made (in a carefully customised device, not in the wild), and were completely racemised at formation? Or that no evidence of a reducing atmosphere exists?"

I think you should take a look at the article. The "carefully customised" device is incredibly simple, consisting of 2 flasks, a hot plate, an electrical sparker, a water condesor, and some glass tubing. That's it. It could be further simplified to remove the heater, as all this does is to make more vapor available in the 2nd flask containing the sparker--you could envision a simpler setup that is put into a window so sunlight evaporates the solution to make it more available to the spark chamber (closed loop, naturally, so no gas actually escapes the system). Actually since then the whole thing would run at a lower temperature you could omit the condensor and the little bend in the glass tubing (the "trap") leaving you with a flask on the bottom with your solution, connected by a single length of glass tubing to a second flask on top with the attached two bits of wire and battery, the whole thing sitting in the window. Sunlight hits the bottom flask, causing evaporation which rises up to the top flask, which sparks, condensate builds up in the top flask and over time falls back into the lower flask or sticks to the interconnecting glass tubing. Slowly you would use up your initial reagents leaving you with a complex mixture with among its components a collection of biologically relevant molecules. Total list of materials for the apparatus: 2 flasks, two feet or so of glass tubing, say a foot of copper wire, and a car battery--even simpler than the original. l'm fairly sure this would work similar to Miller's initial experiment, albeit much slower mainly due to the lower temperature. You should remember that his experiment produced an abundance of multiple different biologically relevant molecules in only a week. The point is: this experiment is incredibly simple, not "carefully customized". All that it was meant to show was that under conditions that at the time were thought to be similar to those on a prebiotic earth you could produce a host of biologically important compounds from even simpler compounds thought to be abundant using energy sources that would be available: heat, light, lightning. At this the experiment, one of many under a great variety of conditions--see his website for a starting point--succeeds at marvelously. Others have already answered your other complaints so it is pointless to repeat their statements here.

Duplicated His Results

[Greyfox]

I've duplicated his results in my refridgerator and now have some primordial soup in there. It's chicken noodle primordial soup and tastes great with fresh baked bread.

If this experiment was done today..

[MongooseCN]

Would the experimentor claim intellectual property rights to the amino acids he found? "Sorry you can't use those drugs, I own the rights to all life on this planet."

Re: If this experiment was done today..

[Black Parrot]

> Would the experimentor claim intellectual property rights to the amino acids he found? "Sorry you can't use those drugs, I own the rights to all life on this planet."

That's how we'll finally get rock-solid proof as to whether or not God exists. When Dr. Frankenstein has his monster stitched together and reaches for the switch, either a lawyer will rush in with a cease-and-desist or else not, and we will be able to determine the existence of an omniscient Creator from that fact alone.

Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of

[dubstop]

You're whining that the odds are too big, but it's guys like Stanley Miller that are trying to figure out exactly how big those odds are.

You might want to actually provide some facts as to why Carl Sagan was wrong, rather than make an ad hominem attack. Most truly academic scientists generally take a bit more convincing than just being told that, "The guy was an asshole, so he must be wrong."

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

[laughing_badger]

It really shouldn't be a shock that you recieved a high mark.

Education should provoke thought. Just training kids to pass tests is of no value. What you did, analysing your results and thinking about _why_ you got them shows far more 'talent' than someone who just repeated an experiment that is guaranteed to give good results.

Sigh! Rant over. It is just crushing to see very little evidence of people designing their science lessons to impart the ability to think, like the guy who wrote Clouds in a Glass of Beer did.

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

[archeopterix]

It hardly needs saying, but in a week I didn't make any amino acids I could detect.

My high school experiment results were quite different - I had to throw the jar into a volcano after the evolved organisms created a civilization and started working on a technology to break the jar and take over the Earth. At least that's what I wrote in my paper. My mark was also quite different, and needless to say I wasn't very happy with it.

Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of

[salvius]

Actually, he was wrong. The experiment's controled variables from the onset changed the odds, but this was not reflected in his research. Furthermore, the odds of formation over disentegration are unfortunately impossible. This is NOT a supported theory today in the biological field. Miller was not an asshole; he was a bright guy, but the primordial soup is no longer the thoery most researchers support (there will always be a few, but there are still archeologists who swear by Atlantis).

Re:where ?

[Eric Ass Raymond]

I think God made this vast universe as a gigantic theatre for us to perform

Yes, and we are thoroughly enjoying the play written by your sadistic puppetmaster.

we certainly can't give life to something dead

Yet. Once people were dying of diseases that can be easily cured today. A stopped heart can be restarted, a damaged heart can be replaced. In near future we can grow new replacement organs. All this has required a lot of research. No thanks to religions. I don't see any reason why the creation of a sentient human being would be beyond our capabilities.

as much as you cant prove the opposite

Your logic sucks. You can't prove a negative. You can, however, prove positive. Yet no-one has been able to prove god. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

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

[paiute]

The chemical was ninhydrin. Reacts with primary amines to give a purple spot on TLC.

Glass is a good blocker of UV. That's why one uses quartz cuvettes to determine the UV spectra of solutions from ca. 400 down to ca. 200 nm. I suspect this is where the good high-energy UVs that might have given you some chemical reactions are.

Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of

[sam_handelman]

"Contact" [geocities.com] gave him a little recognition only because the movie was made believable (and bias I might add)

What? Are you suggesting that the movie Contact, which was a fun movie, but also new age UFO-cult pop drivel, led to Carl Sagan being more respected among SCIENTISTS?

Contact was BIASED? It's a work of fiction! What shortcomings of impartiality did you detect?

Most TRUELY academic scientists will tell you there seems to be "some" evidence of a creator

Well, Carl Sagan, it is true, is not as highly regarded for his own, unique, scientific contributions as one might believe watching PBS.

However, he had mountains of respect compared to anyone who pointed to anything specific and said it was evidence for the existence of a creator. It is perfectly well regarded in respected circles to quote Einstein "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists", particularly if you are being harassed by religious nuts about your own beliefs - volunteering such sentiments in a TRUELY ACADEMIC setting is the mark of a crackpot, however.

To say that any particular observed phenomenon is evidence, however indirect or minor, of some sort of supernatural providence which exceeds our capacity to understand is the mark of a TRUELY desperate religious nut - not a TRUELY academic scientist.

Lottery = your chances in getting picked out the pool may be one in a million, but your chances of picking the right number on the right day and being that one in a million are impossible odds.

I'm a bioinformatician - you may be attempting to communicate something valid, but what you say is nonsense. If your odds of getting picked in a lotterry are one in a million, and you enter the loterry once, you have a one in a million chance of winning the loterry. If you have to enter the single, right loterry, and there are a million of them, the odds are one in a trillion (a million squared.) In any case, not "incalculable."

If you enter the loterry every day for a billion years and have a chance of winning each time, even vanishingly small odds

Furthermore, while it is true that the odds of life arising around any given star may be extremely small, even over a billion year timespan - Sagan's point remains valid, there are about a SEXTILLION (that's ten ^ 21) stars in known universe.

The reason that we don't have enough information to calculate the odds of life arising on an earth-like planet is because we don't have enough information. The one earth-like planet we observe, the Earth, has life on it, but we're here, so our single observation is hopelessly biased.

On the other hand - unless they are "TRUELY academic" - most scientists feel that life arose as a purely chemical process, from chemical laws which were the same at that time as they are today.

Now, we don't yet know all of the steps that need to occur in order for life to arise. However, even given our broad ignorance, we can conclude that you need organic monomers of some kind (assuming organic life such as ours - an entirely seperate question) is Step 1.

Whatever the probability of success of steps 2...n, the more likely you are to succeed at Step 1, the more likely the entire process is to succeed.

Stanley Miller showed that there conditions, conditions not inconceivable on a young, earthlike planet, under which the formation of these molecular monomers is highly likely.

Therefore, the entire series of steps becomes more likely. Groundbreaking work.

Not a single scientists has been able to prove 100% that life exists elsewhere, only propoganda and conjecture.

Entirely true. We may very well be alone in the universe. However, our best estimate is that we are not. Conjecture, yes, propoganda - only in so far as all scientific endeavor is propoganda against superstitious beliefs.

How significant is this?

[DavidPesta]

The production of amino acids on the early earth is neccessary for spontaneous generation, but amino acids are extremely simple compared to proteins and cellular structures. One would expect amino acids whether the spontaneous generation of life happened or not.

Saying that the existance of amino acids on an early earth proves spontaneous generation is almost like saying the existance of carbon and water on a planet proves the existance of life on that planet. Inconclusive!

David Pesta
B.S. Biochemistry

Re: How significant is this?

[Black Parrot]

> > No ones says it "proves" anything, except that amino acids can be made from lifeless matter.

> Are you sure that's all they are saying? The slashdot article said, "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.'" It looks like they are going much further than saying "amino acids can be made from lifeless matter.

I don't see the word "proves" anywhere in that quote. And the fact that the major building blocks of life AWKI can be built from lifeless matter is exactly what convinces most scientists that life is likely to be abundant in the cosmos.

Science works under the assumption that nature behaves the same elsewhere as it does here, so it follows that in a big universe, interesting stuff that happens here will also happen elsewhere, with high probability.

Serious question: WHats the longest this has

[Unknown Poltroon]

been run for? I mean, has anyone set up a big tank o' goo, shocked it and shone uv light in it for several years, to see what develops? COuld life actually evolve(theoretically, i know statisticlly, it wont happen) in such a circumstance?

Re:Serious question: WHats the longest this has

[Idarubicin]

In all likelyhood even if we irradiate the probe, UV pulverize anything that was on it, there will still be traces of some bacteria that would introduce contamination into the system. I am not sure we would relaly ever be able to determine if the life we found was an evolution of amino acids to protienes to cells, or a contamination of natural earth organisms.

Nah, we're actually pretty good at brutally sterilizing scientific and medical tools. As long as your equipment is designed with easy cleaning in mind, introducing contaminants shouldn't be able to happen.

Also, we needn't worry about being tricked by a false positive--if anything recognizably modern grows, we'll know it is contamination.

The only trouble now is finding someone who wants to fund this experiment for a few million years--evolution is a very slow process.

Creationists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Creationists don't take this theory seriously, because why would there be a glass flask on prehistoric Earth in the first place?

Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of

[Planesdragon]

So, the chances are actually incalculable. Lottery = your chances in getting picked out the pool may be one in a million, but your chances of picking the right number on the right day and being that one in a million are impossible odds. Then you have the odds of actually claiming your prize and meeting the eligibility/legitimacy of the prize.

Odd. I could swear that there are people who've actually won the lottery... a couple hundred in America, I wager, which puts them at just about 1 in a million. ;)

Statistic impossibilities mean "don't plan on it happening to you," not "it'll never happen to anyone."

Re:Life Not So Common

[DavidPesta]

That article could have just as easily said,

"Believers in Atheism know that evolution has already been proven by science. Even those who search for an explanation other than evolution will, in fact, die and cease to exist and their attempts to find 'God' will be futile."

With reasoning like that, some evolutionists also find it easy to dismiss evidence.

Both sides of the issue have religious components. What we need are people who can be honest about what they think when they explore the issue. I believe there are intellectually honest people on both sides of the issue.

David Pesta

Ironically....

[Tsali]

All 21 chemicals can be found in a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken...

Obviously Wrong

[ebuck]

Racemic mixtures are not decompsed anything. They are mixtures of "mirror-image" molecules. A completely racemized mixture is one with equal numbers of "left" and "right" members. Presence of both will not prevent you from using one or the other.

Look at you set of hands, one is racemic "left" and the other is racemic "right". You have a completely racemized mixture of hands. This does not deny you use of your left hand.

If amino acid procduction is industrial, usually you get (depending on the process) a mixture of the two racimic (D and L) formations that an amino acid can take. They are mirror images of each other.

Why is this important, well on planet Earth, almost all amino acids involed in life are of type L. (Metorites and non-living processes contribute the majority, if not all, of the D racemes discovered today)

Why only L-amino acids? Today we do not "know" with 100% certainty, but the theory is a living system, for whatever reason, started producing L-amino acids, which unbalanced the ratio. Other living systems (or perhaps the same one) which harvestd these L-amino acids survived and thrived in this L-amino acid rich environment while those that required D-amino acids may have never existed or may have died out due to competition.

Re:It takes intelligence

[tgibbs]

From what I recall (and a quick Google search), there is a big problem with Miller's experiment: the "environment" that Miller created was nothing like the environment of pre-biotic earth, becaus Miller's "atmosphere" was oxygen free, but geological evidence indicates that free oxygen has always been present on earth.

Miller's was the first of a series of experiments demonstrating that the building blocks of life are readily formed under a wide variety of conditions.

Also Miller had to create a "trap" to collect the amino acids being formed to protect them from breaking down again. What would the comparable "natural" trap be?

The problem here, once again, is that there are so many ways that this could happen that it is hard to guess which was most important. Binding to clays, convection currents shuttling compounds between reactive and protective environments, various types of spontaneously formed membranes, etc. etc.

Finally, the mix of both D and L aminos in Miller's soup presents a major problem. Living cells only use L amino acids. D aminos and proteins are toxic.

Not necessarily. Early life could well have used both. But once you go to "assembly line" production of proteins, it makes sense for life to standardize on one or the other, just as we use mostly right-handed screws. Left-handed nuts can be (and are) used, but for most purposes they add unnecessary complexity, and they are "toxic" if you you pick up a left-handed nut when you are expecting a right handed one.

Re:I love this experiment

[davesag]

The simple fact that the evolutionists arguing don't understand the creationist position.

Okay then, please set out the creationist position in terms we simple atheists can understand. please try and avoid circular arguments.

Reply to several posts

[paiute]

Replies to several different posts (sorry for the lack of attribution): /Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... /broke down as fast as they were made (in a /carefully customised device, not in the wild), /and were completely racemised at formation? Or /that no evidence of a reducing atmosphere exists?

Amino acids tend not to break down much. They are exceedingly stable once made. Those that happened to wander back into the electric current might have suffered, but the majority would have stayed safely in solution. The chemical reaction was proceeding in the gas phase; the products were sequestered in the water.

The products are racemic amino acids. Several plausible hypotheses have been put as to how it happened that the L amino acids became predominate: circular dichroism in natural radiation, preferential decompostion of D 14C labeled amino acids, etc.

We don't know all that much about the exact composition of the atmosphere at every time in the earth's history, but the fact that high-energy processes can give amino acids from simple precursors trumps all nit-picking. /Also Miller had to create a "trap" to collect the /amino acids being formed to protect them from /breaking down again. What would the comparable /"natural" trap be?

The natural trap would be water. High energy events are always happening in the atmosphere (lightning, UV rays, cosmic rays). Lighting blasts convert nitrogen to nitrates. Roughly 10% of the nitrate in soil comes from nitrogen transformed by lightning, and the nitrates are trapped by water. The point to take home from the Miller experiment is that the small, high-energy intermediates formed by these processes can combine to form biologially complex building blocks. /As a student of Biological Anthropology, I have /had the oppertunity to take a history of /biological anthropology in which Miller was /mentioned. Interesting guy, but the theory is not /supported any more except by the few staunchest /researchers. In other words, this is pop science. /It survives in text books (like many other /evolutionary inaccuracies that nobody seems to be /willing to update). In truth, the experiment did /not conclude much. In short, the amino acid /theory in reality did not produce very much at /all

This is just wrong. The conclusion drawn from the results of the experiment was revolutionary. It is of at least on the scale of Wohler's synthesis of urea, a biochemical, from "dead" cyanogen and ammonia.

Re:Reply to several posts

[T5]

In the last 50 years many, many scientific discoveries have been made that invalidate the Miller experiment. For instance, studies performed by NASA in the 1980's pertaining to the composition of ancient Earth's atmosphere debunk the Miller experiment's hypothesis that the atmosphere was composed largely of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. They found that the atmospheric composition was dominated by nitrogen and carbon dioxide, with very little of Miller's hand-picked concoction present.

The Miller experiment will go down in history as another irrational jump to conclusions based on a less-than-adequate scientific understanding to promote certain political needs in the scientific community in an attempt to prove macroevolution. I suspect that the only reason it's still promoted is political. It certainly isn't because it's good science. Decry the "nit-picking" all you wish, but the truth of the matter is that Miller's experiment, albeit revolutionary for the 1950's, is far from what modern science would ascribe as (1) reflective of the conditions of primeval earth and (2) extremely unlikely to occur even in the best of circumstances in the wild.

Re:Reply to several posts

[TenDimensions]

In the last 50 years many, many scientific discoveries have been made that invalidate the Miller experiment.

Which are talked about extensively in this article as well as a link from within this article here: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article5.html

They found that the atmospheric composition was dominated by nitrogen and carbon dioxide, with very little of Miller's hand-picked concoction present.

This is not a secret within the scientific community, but it does not negate the fact that his actual contribution to science was demonstrating that certain inorganic elements could be transformed into organic molecules through a simple process. Whether or not those were the exact conditions on early Earth is a bit irrelevant since the major breakthrough was the inorganic to organic transformation.

The Miller experiment will go down in history as another irrational jump to conclusions based on a less-than-adequate scientific understanding to promote certain political needs in the scientific community in an attempt to prove macroevolution.

Yep, they're going to discard his work just as quickly as they're going to discard Darwin's.

Decry the "nit-picking" all you wish, but the truth of the matter is that Miller's experiment, albeit revolutionary for the 1950's, is far from what modern science would ascribe as (1) reflective of the conditions of primeval earth and (2) extremely unlikely to occur even in the best of circumstances in the wild.

Check out the URL I provided above. Like I said, the major contribution of Miller's experiment was the transformation is possible through completely natural means. While the details as it pertains to early Earth may be wrong it still doesn't preclude a dozen or so other possibilities that are now open to speculation as a result of his work. You may disagree with macroevolution all you want, but Miller's contribution was in showing how certain organic building blocks could form through a natural process - sound science by any definition.

Re:Life Not So Common

[spakka]

That article could have just as easily said,

But it didn't. Evolutionists don't argue like that. They don't need to, because they have evidence. That's the point.

Re:I love this experiment

[Tyreth]

If you are interested to learn, the evidence is there. I can point you to the place where the most misunderstandings occur - and that's with inheritence. Evolutionists commonly quote examples similar to Darwin's finches as proof of evolution. They do not understand that these observations are explained equally well, or better, under the creationist model.

Either way, if you can't tell, I don't feel like getting into a debate on specifics unless the person is willing to actually consider what I say. Some people argue because they think they are right. Others are almost positive they are right, but willing to concede they may misunderstand and be wrong. That's my position, and I only want to discuss with others of a similar mind.

Re: It takes intelligence

[Black Parrot]

> From what I recall (and a quick Google search), there is a big problem with Miller's experiment: the "environment" that Miller created was nothing like the environment of pre-biotic earth, becaus Miller's "atmosphere" was oxygen free, but geological evidence indicates that free oxygen has always been present on earth.

No, the existence of iron ore shows otherwise. It precipitated out of the seas when oxygen started building up in the atmosphere; in an oxydizing atmosphere there could never have been enough iron in the oceans to for the massive deposits we actually find.

BTW, I learned this a while back by spending a very little time with google. Make sure you're not getting all your "facts" from creationist Web sites.

> Also Miller had to create a "trap" to collect the amino acids being formed to protect them from breaking down again. What would the comparable "natural" trap be?

Out of my league, so I'll let someone else answer.

Though of course an obvious 'trap' is "life", e.g. if some of the AAs were incorporated into some kind of primitive self-replicator.

> Finally, the mix of both D and L aminos in Miller's soup presents a major problem. Living cells only use L amino acids. D aminos and proteins are toxic.

One hypothesis is that the earliest life formed by polymerization on a quasi-crystaline base such as clay, which could show a preference to one orientation over the other.

Another hypothesis is that both orientations were once used by life forms, but that the luck of the draw meant one crowded the other out. (You get that kind of thing in hereditary systems; a long time ago Scientific American had an interesting article about how surnames dissappear from populations over time due to differential breeding rates and essentially random factors.)

> So it seems to me that what Miller demonstrated is that creating amino acids requires an intelligent mind controlling the process.

Ignoring the problems with the claims you base that conclusion on, that is a major non sequitur. It is tantamount to saying "I rolled my car over yesterday, proving that cars can't be rolled over due to natural causes."

You can't prove a negative?

[raygundan]

Actually, I seem to recall that the way that hypotheses operate is by being proven wrong. Empirical evidence can stack up for years in favor of a hypothesis, but a single test that shows it doesn't work under one of the given conditions disproves it.

I will refer you to this site, which has a handy breakdown of the scientific method for you. Note in particular the bit that says "Experiments are useful in disproving hypotheses. Hypotheses cannot be proved."

The God argument is a problem for scientists *precisely* because it's not disprovable. (Note that that does not mean it's true by default, it means that there is no way to test whether or not it is true.)

Re:I love this experiment

[davesag]

I personally take the position that it can be well shown that evolution is largely inconclusive.

ROTFLMAO

Evolution is one of the most established theories there is. Every test designed to disprove the theory has failed. The theory that living things evolve is just a theory, like the theory that gravity acts between two physical objects is only a theory. On the other hand the theory that an almighty creator created everything is so specious if defied reason. It's not testable, it's not falsable, it's not scientific. It's the work of cranks and crazies from thousands of years ago who had nothing else to explain what they could see. The point of science is that all theories should be debunked, and debunkable. Theories that withstand efforts to debunk them are good theories, but still only theories. Theories that make predictions when are then verified by experiment are good theories.

And this talk of 'god guided evolution' is also just a crock. I mean if your god is so amazing then why does he need to guide evolution? for sport? he's omniscient and beyond such earthly pleasures surely.

no. if you overuse mouthwash the plaque causing bacteria will evolve to eat that mouthwash. if you take antibiotics the bacteria aflicting you will evolve resistance via the very well understood mechanisms of natural selection. the list of examples that support evolutionary theories is inexhaustable. why posit the existance of a god when it's just not needed to explain things and does not add in any way to our understanding of the world.

evolution even works in software. genetic programming, genetic algorithms, evolutionary computing - does god guide these?

you can even look at evolution in non-living systems. take for example the vinyl LP. faced with 'attack' by CDs and CD players, the LP and turntables, evolved from a recording medium into a musical instrument in their own right. did god have a vested interest in the survival of LPs? is god a DJ?

Your god bats for both sides. the god the poor iraqi's were busy praying to is the same god as yours. Those guys who flew planes into the WTC - same god driving their bus too.

Re: I love this experiment

[Black Parrot]

> I personally take the position that it can be well shown that evolution is largely inconclusive. People can use it as a theoretical model to understand a lot of things, but I have kept my eyes on too many of the details to say it can be said true for sure.

Please list some of the details that you think cast doubt on it, along with some insightful comments that will let us know whether you're talking about something you understand instead of just quoting creationist Web sites.

> So, if evolution in its strictest sense does turn out to be false, the only alternative is creation.

non sequitur

> (Even God guided evolution can be thought of as a form of creation to a point.)

God-guided chemstry, god-guided weather, god-guided planetary orbits, and god-guided nuclear fission make a lot of sense too.

> Outlining all of this thought with exhaustive examples would be well beyond the scope of this post. ;)

Providing supporting details is outside the scope of creationism altogether.

The first time I heard about this experiment

[fzammett]

I remember it very clearly... It was 10th grade biology. My teacher mentioned the experiment and I remember very vividly that I was so taken aback by what he was saying. It seemed so immensely important and profound, and yet no one else in the class seemed terribly interested. I was simultaneously excited and sadened.

Excited because I'd learned of something so seemingly important, and sadened because no one else seemed to see the importance of it.

That was also the year I saw the first images of atoms, that one where they had written the letters IBM with Xenon atoms. That was another tremendously shocking experience.

Is it just me or does the vast majority of the general population no longer see the importance of pure science? Are we so accustomed to amazing developments and incredible pieces of technology surrounding us all the time that things like these just don't impress us any more?

Seeing atoms SHOULD amazes us. Learning of the building blocks of life being created from scratch in a jar SHOULD boggle our minds. Yet so many people shrug things like this off and don't see the fundamental nature of them.

Ok, now I'm just sadened!

Re: I love this experiment

[Black Parrot]

> If you are interested to learn, the evidence is there. I can point you to the place where the most misunderstandings occur - and that's with inheritence. Evolutionists commonly quote examples similar to Darwin's finches as proof of evolution. They do not understand that these observations are explained equally well, or better, under the creationist model.

The problem is that you can explain any observation with the creationist model, since at heart it is an appeal to magic.

At least the scientific theories are dependent on the evidence.

Miller is defunct

[searleb]

For more information on Miller and prebiotic Earth, here is a quotation from an Angew. Chem. review article by Kay Severin called Hot Stones or Cold Soup? New Investigations on the Endogenous Origin of Organic Compounds on Earth (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed 2000, 39, No. 20). It pretty much sums up the Miller reactions, why they're wrong, and what people think now:

"The most famous experiment ... was carried out almost fifty years ago by Stanley L. Miller, at that time a PhD student in the group of Harold Urey in Chicago. Miller was able to show that electric discharges in an atmosphere of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water led to the formation of significant amounts of various amino acids. Experiments of this kind were repeated in numerous variants. If reducing gases were employed mixtures of organic compounds of low molecular weight could be detected in many cases. This has led to the popular idea that the primordial ocean resembled a nutritious soup.

"But the possibility that earth once had a reducing atmosphere is questioned. A well known argument against it is the high photolability of methane and ammonia. Because a shielding layer of ozone was missing a high concentration of these gases is believed to be unlikely. Furthermore, several other results point to a neutral atmosphere of CO2 and N2. Given the fact that the atmosphere was based on an unproductive mixture of CO2 and N2 the nutritional value of the primordial ocean drops significantly.

"An alternative scenario has been propagated for several years by [Gunter] Wachterhauser. Instead of a primordial soup he favors hot minerals as the place where organic molecules were initially built as life subsequently emerged. Especially sulfur-containing minerals like pyrite are proposed to have acted as an energy source and catalyst both under the extreme conditions found in hydrothermal or volcanic vents."

Basically, primordial soup syntheses (like Miller's reactions) are out and hot rock syntheses are in. These hot rock procedures have much much much lower yields, but people are slowly figuring out how to build amino acids through them. For instance, people, headed by Wachterhauser, have figured out how to carbon fixate (condense) carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into organic building blocks for amino acids. For instance, in early 2000, Chen and Bahnemann were able to convert CO2 and water to small organics (acetaldehyde, ethanol, acetic acid) at high pressures and temperatures. Similarly, people have figured out how to take amino acids and convert them into peptides under high temperature and pressure situations.

However, to date no one has been able to actually make an amino acid through these techniques. As a result, the proof that amino acids were delivered by comets or meteorites (true fact, this is not an x-file) and now space dust, becomes much more appealing. Once the building blocks arrived on Earth, these hot rock syntheses could have taken over.

Re:I love this experiment

[davesag]

Okay I'll bite. First up you claim "Evolution is not scientific." As I have said before it's a theory. it's a theory that makes predictions that can be tested. Those tests are designed to falsify that theory. Thus it is scientific.

Next: I don't recall bringing up the age of the earth, but since you ask, there are many ways of measuring the age of geological structures, and thus the earth.

• radiometric dating. This method relies on the radioactive decay of an unstable type of atom (parent isotope) within the rock into another type of stable atom (daughter isotope). In a certain period of time, called the half-life, half of the parent isotopes will have decayed into daughter isotopes; in an additional, equivalent period of time, half of the remaining parent isotopes will have decayed, and so on. The length of the half-life, which can be measured, varies for different isotopes. By measuring the ratio of parent to daughter isotopes, the time that has elapsed since decay began can be calculated; this is equivalent to the age of the rock.
• fission track dating. Certain minerals in rocks contain small amounts of uranium which decay radioactively by the splitting apart of the atomic nucleus (nuclear fission). The two fission fragments produced are highly energetic and highly charged, and they produce a linear trail of radiation damage in the surrounding crystals of the rock. This trail is known as a fission track. Fission tracks can be enlarged by chemical etching until they can be observed and measured under a microscope. The number of tracks is proportional to the time since they started to accumulate, and to the amount of uranium in the rock. The amount of uranium present can be determined by irradiating the rock with neutrons to produce a second set of fission tracks. The ratio of the original tracks to the new ones gives a measure of geological age.
• amino-acid racemisation. The method relies on the fact that molecules of amino-acids, the building blocks of proteins, occur in two different forms that are mirror images of each other. These two forms are referred to as left-handed and right-handed. In living organisms, only left-handed amino acid molecules are present, but once the organism dies they slowly convert to their right handed form. Simultaneously, the right handed forms produced slowly convert back to left handed forms, until an equilibrium is reached (half left handed and half right handed), at which point the ratio remains constant. The time taken to reach equilibrium is known, so by determining the ratio of right handed to left handed forms it is possible to estimate the time elapsed since the organism died.

see the Museum of Victoria's site for more detail. You may also like to check out the Age of the earth FAQ, or that bastion of all wisdom - google.

Re:I love this experiment

[Dr. Manhattan]

I mean if your god is so amazing then why does he need to guide evolution?

Isaac Asimov had a short story about this. If an alien saw us playing pool, he'd be confused. "Why bother using that inefficient stick to poke a ball to knock the other balls into the pockets? You've got hands, why not just grab them and stuff them in the pockets?"

The proposal was that God used inefficient, roundabout means for its own amusement, like a "trick shot" in pool. The punchline was...

spoiler...

...when one character noted that we humans were developing computers and AI at roughly the same time as nuclear weapons. Perhaps we were being set up to make our successors and then clear ourselves off the stage...

Re: Agreed

[Black Parrot]

> It is a far leap from amino acids to life. I am still baffled by those who think that life just happens.

Most of us actually think that it happens as a result of the laws of the universe that give us interesting stuff like gravity and chemistry, which draw atoms together in large masses and do interesting things with them.

> The Earth's atmosphere today is much more hospitable to life but we still do not see amino acids coming together and organizing into complex proteins or anything resembling life.

Our present atmosphere would immediately oxidize any primitive precursor to life. (And if the atmosphere happened to miss it, existing life would eat it.)

> This can't even be done in the laboratory.

Neither can volcanos, cold fronts, and continental drift, but they still happen anyway.

> It is contrary to the 2nd law of thrmodynamics.

You have no clue what the 2LoT says.

> I don't believe in spontaneous generation.

Neither do scientist. Though I suspect you actually meant to say "abiogenesis", which is something else altogether, and which both scientists and creationists believe in (their only dispute being over the mechanism).

> The odds of it happening are beyond astronomical.

And we've got a beyond-astronomical universe full of places to roll the dice.

Re: Life Not So Common

[Black Parrot]

> > Why is it that Christian "logic" dictates that God is real even though you can't see Him, yet it does not follow that alien life must be real even though we can't see it?

> It doesn't say that. It says that the ways of seeing God are not always the same as the ways of seeing, say, a brick. ..and leaves us wondering whether God is real in the same way, say, a brick is real.

> Things really appear- to many people- to be designed.

And the sun appears - to almost everyone - to go around the earth.

[snip good stuff]

> The fact is though, Christians have a vested interest in learning as much about the universe as possible, because they believe it to be created by the same Creator that created them.

Some Christians do. Others conclude that they should despise knowledge of the universe.

Re: I love this experiment

[Black Parrot]

> Oh, you think your position is so secure. "Every test designed to disprove the theory has failed". What are you talking about? Evolution is not scientific.

All you're doing is showing the better-informed part of the public that your denial of evolution is based on complete ignorance of what it is all about.

If you understood the theory of evolution at the "read one book on it" level you would be able to make a long list of conceivable falsifying observations.

> Tell me how you know the earth is so old (4.5 billion last time I heard). This is not a rhetorical question, I want an answer - and not about space. I'm talking about the earth

Try talkorigins.org for an introductory-level answer. Notice also that it was the first thing to pop up when I typed "age of the earth" into google and clicked the submit submit button.

Re:Agreed

[RatBastard]

It is a far leap from amino acids to life.
This is true. and no one is saying that amino acids jumped up and formed life the second there were enough to matter. Life took time to form, a LOT of time.

I am still baffled by those who think that life just happens.
Life doesn't "just happen". It takes the right ingredients, energy and time. Possibly millions of years of time.

The Earth's atmosphere today is much more hospitable to life
No, it's not. Oxygen is a poison. Life has adapted to the presense of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen activley destroys the basic building blocks of life when not protected.

but we still do not see amino acids coming together and organizing into complex proteins or anything resembling life.
And we never will on Earth. The atmosphere is all wrong for it. And we will have to wait a long time to see it. It's not like waiting for your cheese to get moldy.

This can't even be done in the laboratory.
For the reasons listed above. And creating life is a hell of a lot more complex than just creating amino acids. In the steps to creating life, this is on the same level as buying one adjustable wrench in the construction of the Empire State Building.

It is contrary to the 2nd law of thrmodynamics.
Really? How? Life is not a closed system. It requires energy from an outside source. The Sun provides the power that lets life go on.

I don't believe in spontaneous generation. The odds of it happening are beyond astronomical.
All you need is a positive non-zero probablity for something to eventually happen. We have no idea how amny times life almost formed and then died before it finally succeeded. Even with one chance in one-hundred million, if you have millions, and maybe billions of years for something to happen, it just might. And it only has to succede once.

Re: I love this experiment

[Black Parrot]

> Next question then. All these theories are based on the known speed of a process. How do you know this process has been operating at that speed for all of history? Eg, potassium half-life. How do you know that has always decayed at the same constant rate the last millions of years?

Because unlike the fantasy world inhabited by evolution deniers, scientists live in a world where claims have consequences. E.g., if radioactive decay rates are not constant within a very small margin, the universe would be a very different place. Ditto with the speed of light and all the other natural processes that creationists think they can diddle without any consequences other than changing the age of the earth.

And learn a bit about science before you go on a crusade of refuting it.

Re:Evidence please!

[Sgt York]

If the mix wasn't racemized, I would seriously think he had falsified the data. The amino acids were made chemically, not biologically. Any chiral compound made chemically will be racemic. (All but one of the amino acids are chiral)

It should be no surprise at all that the mixture was racemic. The reason only Creation "scientist's" websites say anything about it is because they are the only ones that think it has any relevance.

As for breakdown, they did break down quickly, that was in the original publications of the experiment.

The "break down as quickly as they are made" is a half truth. At the gas-liquid interface, this is true. The amino acids did break down very rapidly. However, a fraction of the products became dissolved in the liquid soon after formation, and were preserved. This caused a gradual buildup of product.

Not Defunct

[RatBastard]

He's not defunct. His point was that the building blocks of life - complex organic molecules - can be formed from inorganic molecules. And he was right, and still is right.

The actual mechanism might not be what we thought it was then, but that is irrelevant.

Does the fact that gravity may function by means of gravatons invalidate the work of Isaac Newton?

Re:It takes intelligence

[tgibbs]

It's unlikely that anybody will every create a life form by a Miller-type experiment, unless the probablility of life forming spontaneously is far greater than even the most enthusiastic proponents imagine. Moreover, it might be very hard to recognize a primodial life form. You could have one of Stuart Kauffman's sets of reciprocally catalyzing polymers (Stuart A Kauffman, The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution) or one of Cairns-Smith's replicating clay layers (A. G. Cairns-Smith, Seven Clues to the Origin of Life) in your soup and not even know it. And those are just the ideas that people have thought about.

Chance has limits

[taradfong]

All you need is a positive non-zero probablity for something to eventually happen. We have no idea how amny times life almost formed and then died before it finally succeeded.

Not quite. There are limits to chance. There is a number which represents the number of electrons in the universe. If something has odds of 1 in that number, it is considered impossible.

The 'monkeys on typewriters ending up with war and peace' flies in the face of reason, IMHO, and yet it is a crutch and fundamental pillar of evolutionary theory, attractive because one can always simply require the disbeliever to roll the dice a trillion more times or so.

For those who think I'm rationalizing equally with my limited 100 year lifespan perspective, consider this: they have never discovered fossilized remains of an inter-species mutation; e.g., a creature evolutionarily between A and B. With all the dice rolling and obvious failures along the way, one would expect to find a whole lot of these, no?

And, the earth has not had an infinite amount of time to roll the dice. It is of finite age. Recent work shows the earth as 5 billion years old, not counting for the time it required to cool. Fossil evidence shows life emerging 400 million years ago. This is not enough time to go from scratch to our planet's situation today. Even if you took all the carbon in the universe, put it on the earth, allowed it to react at the most rapid rate possible AND left it for a billion years, the odds of ending up with one functional protein are 1 in 10exp60.

Re:Chance has limits

[RatBastard]

Not quite. There are limits to chance. There is a number which represents the number of electrons in the universe. If something has odds of 1 in that number, it is considered impossible.
But life is not as random as that. What we know about the formation of organic molecules seems to show that they will form almost every time they are given the chance. Given the right ingredients (some of which we know, some we don't), the right conditions (which we are learning to be varied beyond what we ever imagined), enough energy and time, and organic molecules will form. There is organic matter (not life, certainly, but still organic matter) iin the heads of comets. If organic matter can form there, it must be able to form almost anywhere that doesn't actively destroy it.

The 'monkeys on typewriters ending up with war and peace' flies in the face of reason
According to a recent article that idea doesn't work anyway. Monkies aren't random. They have goals and agendas and they would rather beat the computer to bits and urinate on the keyboard than type anything.

However, chemistry isn't random, either. It follows rules and these rules stack the dice in our favor.

For those who think I'm rationalizing equally with my limited 100 year lifespan perspective, consider this: they have never discovered fossilized remains of an inter-species mutation; e.g., a creature evolutionarily between A and B.
Really? We've never found an animal that looks like a mix of a lizard and a bird? Never found anything that looks like a mix of a man and an ape? Never found a fish with fins capapble of acting like legs?

We've found a tremendous number of creatures that look like a mix of different forms. What we haven't found is an animal that looks like an ape with a human head, or a human with an ape's head. But evolution doesn't work like that, anyway.

And furthermore we have to consider the completeness of the fossile record. How many T-Rex skeletions have we found? 30? T-Rexes lived on this earth for three to five million years and we've only found thirty or so skeletons. How many T-Rexes lived and died and didn't become fossils? Then consider the lowly trilobite. We've found tens of thousands of their fossils. But trilobites lived for over 250,000,000 years and lived in shallow seas, the perfect place for fossils to form. How many indevidual animals must live before there is a chance that one of them will die in a place that will allow their bones to be fossilized? How many of these fossils survive the churning of the earth's crust? How many of those are actually found?

The fossil record is the best catalog we have of what once wandered the earth, but it is by no means complete.

Recent work shows the earth as 5 billion years old, not counting for the time it required to cool. Fossil evidence shows life emerging 400 million years ago.
While the earth is 4.5 - 5 billion years old, life is far older than 400 million years. Estimates place life at at 3.5 billion years old. Life has had a LONG time to go from primitive forms to more complex forms.

Re:Chance has limits

[junkgrep]

---The 'monkeys on typewriters ending up with war and peace' flies in the face of reason, IMHO, and yet it is a crutch and fundamental pillar of evolutionary theory, attractive because one can always simply require the disbeliever to roll the dice a trillion more times or so.---

If your only idea of how evolution or the various theories of abiogenesis work is just "rolling the dice" then you're already tripped yourself up. The whole point to both these theories is that there are some natural MECHANISMS that produce organized results. Not just chance assembleges at all: it's the particular principles of chemistry, and later, genetics, that actually induce certain things under certain conditions, leading to other inducements, often in a feedback loop.

---consider this: they have never discovered fossilized remains of an inter-species mutation; e.g., a creature evolutionarily between A and B.---

Oh for goodness sake: did you think you could dazzle the boards with such a well-refuted lie? Even the very suggestion shows that you are not hip to the way in which evolutionary theory destroyed the very idea of "kind" whereby we could say that a creature is "between" two "other" kinds. Our idea of "kind" is simply our eagerness to pretend that what we see today represents a bunch of stable and eternal Platonic forms from which any deviation from is some sort of mutant. But ALL species alive today are potentially intermediate forms to something in the future, and their ancestors WERE intermediate forms between them and something even earlier. Worse, the idea of "intermediate forms" is doubly misleading, because it implies that any given direction is "going somewhere," transitioning between one discrete thing and a new, pre-defined goal. But the theory of evolution is NOT suggesting that in the least. There is no discrete goal that something is somehow knowingly "transitioning" towards.

Even if all that were not the case, we DO have plenty of fossils which demonstrate the sorts of big-scale "transistional forms" that you're asking about (ones that just happen to strike us as grossly "in-between" two sorts of creatures we are comfortably familiar with today because they share certain large and obvious features: but in reality, are ONLY "in-between" from our present perspective, not in any real sense). Talk origins has a whole listing of them.