Chemical Evolution

(FOR THOSE WHO ARE EVOLUTIONISTS BUT ACCEPT A DIFFERENT THEORY, I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN HEARING IT ALSO)The Work of Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane and the Theory of Chemical EvolutionThis is the theory that most modern biologist accept. This theory states that the primitive earth was created with pools of chemicals and that the primitive earth an atmosphere that was conductive to the formation of life. With energy supplied by lightning, chemicals in this pre-biotic soup- over a period of billions of years- linked together, and a sample life formed. From there evolution took over.It was Alexander Oparin who, in 1924, proposed that complex molecular arrangements and the functions of living matter evolved from simple molecules that pre-existed on the early earth. Then in 1928, J.B.S Haldane theorized that ultra-violet light acting in the earth's primitive atmosphere caused sugar and amino acids to concentrate in the oceans, and from there a primordial broth was eventually formed. Nobel winner Harold Urey suggested that the earth's primitive atmosphere made it favorable for organic compounds to have emerged. And finally, University of Chicago professor Stanley Miller decided to test this experimentally. Miller recreated the atmosphere of the primitive earth in a laboratory and shot electricity through it to stimulate the effects of lightning. Very soon, he found that amino acids (the building blocks of life) had been created. To many these proved that life could have emerged from non-living chemicals. So is this a realistic option? Decide after reading more about Stanley Miller's experiment.Unfortunately for Miller, his results have since been invalidated due to one huge problem. The problem is Miller or Oparin had no proof that the earth's early atmosphere was composed of ammonia, methane, and hydrogen, yet this is what Miller used in his experiment. This experiment was based on physical chemistry. Miller and Oparin wanted to get a chemical reaction that would be favorable so they proposed that the atmosphere be rich in these gases. Oparin knew that if you started with gases like nitrogen and carbon dioxide, the chemicals would not react. So what was the real atmosphere like? From 1980 on, which was well after the Miller experiment, NASA has shown that the primitive earth has NEVER had any methane, hydrogen, or ammonia that would amount to anything. Instead, NASA has consistently shown that the primitive earth was composed of water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. With this knowledge, you absolutely cannot get the same experimental results using these proper mixtures. The theory of chemical evolution is dead when given the NASA information on the primitive earth.

sounds like a topic for the long dormant Origin of Life forum.

Would you care to provide some references for those claims. All I have found so far is a 1980 paper by Pinto from the Goddard Space Flight Centre showing that formaldehyde could have formed in the primitive atmosphere. A recent paper from Stanley Miller's lab (Miyakawa, 2002) looks at prebiotic synthesis in a CO-CO₂-N₂-H₂O atmosphere. [Modified chemical formula to use subscripts. --Admin]******************************************
Miyakawa S, Yamanashi H, Kobayashi K, Cleaves HJ, Miller SL. Prebiotic synthesis from CO atmospheres: implications for the origins of life.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Nov 12;99(23):14628-31. Epub 2002 Oct 30.Pinto, J.P., G.R. Gladstone, and Y.L. Yung
Photochemical production of formaldehyde in Earth's primitive atmosphere.
Science 210,1980,183-185.[This message has been edited by Admin, 09-12-2003]

Hi, General!From the Forum Guidelines:

6. Never include material not your own without attribution to the original source.

I don't have time to analyze your entire post, but after poking about a bit on the Internet it seems possible that significant portions were lifted nearly verbatim from Lee Stobel's book The Case for Faith. Please be aware that persistent violations of the Forum Guidelines can result in suspension of posting privileges.------------------

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Administrator

Thread moved here from the Evolution forum.

General Could you explain in any logical way how you believe God could be capable of fashioning a universe of the size and complexity of the one we observe simply by "speaking? Do you believe in supernatural magic and if so what reasoning do you use to obtain this stance?{The above is off-topic, and should be discussed elsewhere. - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 09-12-2003]

The paper by S. Miyakawa et al. "Prebiotic synthesis from CO atmospheres: implications for the origins of life" uses only CO and N₂ gases, plus water, under 700 Torr and proton irradiation.

quote:

---

Methods
An equimolar gas mixture of carbon monoxide (350 Torr; UHP grade, Toho Sanso, Yokohama, Japan) and 15N-enriched nitrogen (350 Torr; 99.8% 15N, Shoko, Tokyo) was enclosed in a glass tube (400 ml) containing liquid water (5 ml). 15N₂ was used to identify possible contamination. The gas mixture was irradiated with protons generated by a van de Graaff accelerator (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo) at 297 K for 3 h.

---

This, as discussed in the paper's introduction, is not a comparable prebiotic atmosphere. It is supposed that the prebiotic atmosphere contained CO₂, N₂ and H₂O and would have to contain CH₄, H₂ and CO for amino acid production. It’s an exciting experiment, but I wonder what the yields would have been, and they were already pretty low in this experiment, had they utilised a high partial pressure of CO₂.

They do show the effect of different values of CO/(CO+CO₂) on synthesis of Uracil in the paper and refer to similar work on Glycine, there is no evidence that the CO₂ inhibits synthesis but obviously the lower amount of CO becomes a limiting factor. There is obviously still CO₂ in the experiment, formed from the proton irradiation of CO, about half of the CO is thought to be oxidised into CO₂.[This message has been edited by Wounded King, 09-25-2003]