Question

7.An experiment was conducted that showd the building blocks of life (amino acids) could indeed be formed by the combination of warm salt water, volcanic gases, and sparks of electricity.

Answer 1

The most significant experiment performed to date on the formation of organic molecules remains that of Miller and Urey in 1952 when they sought to test the hypothesis of Oparin and Haldane that the organic building blocks of life emerged from a reducing atmosphere (Miller, 1953). Miller filled a flask with the four gaseous elements of the reductive atmosphere: methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water. He then passed electrical discharges through them to simulate lightning. After 125 h of the experiment, using the equipment available to him at the time, Miller identified several alpha amino acids contained within the residues.