Chemists May Be Zeroing In On Chemical Reactions That Sparked the First Life (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit quotes a report from Scientific Magazine: DNA is better known, but many researchers today believe that life on Earth got started with its cousin RNA, since that nucleic acid can act as both a repository of genetic information and a catalyst to speed up biochemical reactions. But those favoring this "RNA world" hypothesis have struggled for decades to explain how the molecule's four building blocks could have arisen from the simpler compounds present during our planet's early days. Now chemists have identified simple reactions that, using the raw materials on early Earth, can synthesize close cousins of all four building blocks. The resemblance isn't perfect, but it suggests scientists may be closing in on a plausible scenario for how life on Earth began. The study has been published in the journal Nature.

Comments

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[MightyYar]

the creationist argument that it is impossible will have to be thrown away forever.

That's very naive. They believe in magic, so they can change the argument in literally any way that they can imagine. If you demonstrated abiogenesis, they'd stop saying it's "impossible" and start saying, "See? You needed an intelligent being to set it all up!"