Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 64 (9164 total)
4 online now:
Newest Member: ChatGPT
Post Volume: Total: 916,803 Year: 4,060/9,624 Month: 931/974 Week: 258/286 Day: 19/46 Hour: 1/3


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Question about Miller experiment
Quetzal
Member (Idle past 5899 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 5 of 6 (89027)
02-27-2004 9:59 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Tamara
02-27-2004 8:35 AM


Re: so far?
Yeah, those are pretty much what the creationists seize on to cast doubt on the Miller-Urey experiment. What they neglect to mention is that the "trap" was simply a way of concentrating the reactants that resulted from the atmosphere experiment so they could be analysed. The amino acids, etc, were formed in the experiment's putative reducing atmosphere before being concentrated in the trap - thus proving that organic building blocks could be formed (i.e., the results proved the hypothesis correct). Creationists are being highly misleading by leaving out this little tidbit.
As to the atmospheric composition itself - yeah, most experimenters these days don't think that the early atmosphere was all that reducing. So the creationists are right on that. However, they're once again being disingenuous by neglecting to mention that other experiments over the last 50 years have even MORE impressive results using more "realistic" atmospheric compositions. Remember, Miller-Urey wasn't trying to create life - just biologically significant organic molecules from essentially inorganic chemistry. In that, they succeeded. Since then, we've found roughly the same flavors of amino acids etc in meteorites and the spectra of comets. Seems that this stuff is actually pretty easy to synthesize under a huge variety of conditions...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Tamara, posted 02-27-2004 8:35 AM Tamara has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by TheNewGuy03, posted 05-03-2005 3:32 AM Quetzal has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024