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Stanley Miller and Harold Urey carried out some experiments in 1952 and published their results in 1953. The aim was to see if substances now made by living things could be formed in the conditions thought to have existed on the early Earth.

The two scientists sealed a mixture of water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen in a sterile flask. The mixture was heated to evaporate water to produce water vapour. Electric sparks were passed through the mixture of water vapour and gases, simulating lightning. After a week, contents were analysed. Amino acids, the building blocks for proteins, were found.

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Hydrothermal Vents

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BBC Nature - Hydrothermal vents videos, news and facts

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Hydrothermal vents - black smokers, white smokers and warm water vents - are areas on the sea floor where water heated by volcanic activity under the seabed gushes out.

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A hydrothermal vent is an opening in the sea floor out of which heated mineral-rich water flows.

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Stanley Miller and Harold Urey carried out some experiments in 1952 and published their results in 1953. The aim was to see if substances now made by living things could be formed in the conditions thought to have existed on the early Earth.

The two scientists sealed a mixture of water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen in a sterile flask. The mixture was heated to evaporate water to produce water vapour. Electric sparks were passed through the mixture of water vapour and gases, simulating lightning. After a week, contents were analysed. Amino acids, the building blocks for proteins, were found.

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The experiment used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and hydrogen (H2). The chemicals were all sealed inside a sterile array of glass tubes and flasks connected in a loop, with one flask half-full of liquid water and another flask containing a pair of electrodes. The liquid water was heated to induce evaporation, sparks were fired between the electrodes to simulate lightning through the atmosphere and water vapor, and then the atmosphere was cooled again so that the water could condense and trickle back into the first flask in a continuous cycle.

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The Miller-Urey experiment supported the theory of a ‘primordial soup’, the idea that complex chemicals needed for living things to develop could be produced naturally on the early Earth.

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A scientist called Hazen encased a tiny amount of water, a chemical called pyruvate, and a powder that produces carbon dioxide, in 3 non-reactive gold capsules. He heated the capsules to 480 degrees and pressed down on them at 2,000 atmospheres. When he took the capsules out two hours later, the contents had turned into tens of thousands of different compounds. In later experiments, he combined nitrogen, ammonia and other molecules plausibly present on the early earth. In these experiments, Hazen and his colleagues created all sorts of organic molecules, including amino acids and sugars.

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Stanley Miller conducting his experiment

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A classic experiment in molecular biology , the Miller-Urey experiment, established that the conditions that existed in Earth's primitive atmosphere were sufficient to produce amino acids, the subunits of proteins comprising and required by living organisms. In essence, the Miller-Urey experiment fundamentally established that Earth's primitive atmosphere was capable of producing the building blocks of life from inorganic materials.

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In 1953 Stanley Miller and Harold Urey published the results

of an experiment that had taken place a year earlier. The scientists sealed a mixture of water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen in a sterile flask, to simulate the conditions on planet earth 4 billion years ago. The mixture was heated, and the water evaporated. Electric sparks were passed through the mixture of gases, simulating lightning. After a week, amino acids were found.

This is significant, because animo acids are the building blocks of proteins, and so the experiment supported the primordial soup theory, which is the theory that the chemicals needed for life to form could be found naturally on earth

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Stanley Miller and Harold Urey carried out some experiments in 1952 and published their results in 1953. The aim was to see if substances now made by living things could be formed in the conditions thought to have existed on the early Earth.

The two scientists sealed a mixture of water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen in a sterile flask. The mixture was heated to evaporate water to produce water vapour. Electric sparks were passed through the mixture of water vapour and gases, simulating lightning. After a week, contents were analysed. Amino acids, the building blocks for proteins, were found.

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abiogenesis is the field of science dedicated to studying how life might have arisen for the first time on the primordial young Earth. Despite the enormous progress that has been made since the Miller-Urey experiment, abiogenesis is under constant attack from creationists, who continually claim that the origin of life by natural processes is so unlikely as to be, for all practical purposes, impossible.

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Stanley Miller and Harold Urey carried out some experiments in 1952 and published their results in 1953. The aim was to see if substances now made by living things could be formed in the conditions thought to have existed on the early Earth.

The two scientists sealed a mixture of water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen in a sterile flask. The mixture was heated to evaporate water to produce water vapour. Electric sparks were passed through the mixture of water vapour and gases, simulating lightning. After a week, contents were analysed. Amino acids, the building blocks for proteins, were found.

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The Miller-Urey experiment (or Miller experiment) was a chemical experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and tested the chemical origin of life under those conditions. The experiment supported Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S.

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The experiment created amino acids which make up proteins and proteins

make up life so we know that life probably could have been created like this.

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BBC Earth - Timeline - The first oxygen on Earth was soaked up by seas

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Watch BBC videos about the early life on Earth and how it affected the geology of our planet.