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Does evolution describe how life began?

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User Fhnuzoag
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Answer:

Evolution does not describe how life began. Instead, it explains how life has changed and diversified over time. The theory of evolution, developed by Charles Darwin, is based on the idea that species evolve through a process called natural selection.

Natural selection is a mechanism by which individuals with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those traits on to future generations. Over time, this leads to changes in the inherited characteristics of a population.

To understand how life began, we need to look at a different field of study called abiogenesis or biogenesis. Abiogenesis is the scientific hypothesis that life could have originated from non-living matter. While the exact process of how life first arose on Earth is still uncertain, scientists believe that it may have occurred through a series of chemical reactions in a primordial soup-like environment.

One famous experiment that supports this hypothesis is the Miller-Urey experiment. In this experiment, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey recreated the conditions believed to be present on early Earth and demonstrated that simple organic molecules, such as amino acids, could be formed from inorganic compounds.

So, in summary, evolution explains how life has changed and diversified over time, while abiogenesis attempts to explain how life first originated from non-living matter.

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User Tin
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