Summary:
- Scientists think that lightning sparked chemical reactions in Earth’s early atmosphere.
- The early atmosphere contained gases such as ammonia, methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide.
- Scientists hypothesize that this created a ‘soup’ of organic molecules from inorganic chemicals.
- In 1953, scientists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey used their imaginations to test this hypothesis.
- They created a simulation experiment to see if organic molecules could arise in this way.
- Within a week, several simple organic molecules had formed.
- RNA may have been the first organic molecule to form.