What is Primordial Soup?
The nature of the origin of life remains a captivating question among many scientistis. Primordial Soup Theory, developed by scientists Oparin and Haldane in the 1920s, is one of several theories as to how life began on earth.
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1920s Theory
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Russian scientists Aleksandr Oparin and John Haldane independently suggested in the 1920s that spontaneous generation of life, while not possible under current earth atmospheric conditions, may have been perfectly plausible in earth's earliest atmosphere. Oparin and Haldane proposed that the earth's primitive atmosphere consisted of reduced substances such as methane, ammonia and water instead of oxygen. Both scientists thought that these simple gases that made up the earth before life began, reacting to the sun's ultraviolet light over time, began to collide, thicken and turned into a "sea" of compounds, which eventually evolved into proteins. These proteins would, over a course of millions of years, become the first living cells.
1953 Experiment
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In 1953, Dr. Harold Urey and Dr. Stanley Miller demonstrated that amino acids could, indeed, be formed by passing an electric current through methane. These scientists mixed methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor in a 5-liter flask to simulate earth's theorized primitive atmosphere. This flask was then energized with an electrical charge representing ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The water vapor eventually condensed into "rain" and Miller and Urey found a thin layer of hydrocarbons on the water's surface. After a week, the flask was found to contain several types of protein.
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Primordial Soup in 2010
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As of 2010, the Primordial Soup theory is under serious scrutiny. Scientist Dr. Nick Lane from University College in London and his team of researchers now believe that earth's early atmosphere may not have contained much methane or ammonia at all. Rather, they propose that deep-sea hydrothermal vents powered life's predecessors. This means that warm fluids percolate through the ocean floor, react to ocean water, and form tiny inorganic cells. These catalytic cells generated lipids, proteins and nucleotides, which eventually evolved into the first organic cells from which life is built.
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