Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 368
ORIGIN OF LIFE – DIFFERENT THEORIES AND PROPOSITIONS proteins, the building material from which the bricks of life are made. . At that time, the outcome of this experiment was considered the most stunning evidence that the prerequisite organic material for building the bricks of life could originate from natural atmospheric interaction with sea water, producing the 'primordial soup'. Soon, scientific fiction began to take root in this discovery. Many a scientist, in a highly excited state of mind, began to predict that it would not be long before life itself could be conjured up in test tubes. Many years later, however, Miller himself had quite a different gloomy confession to make: 'The problem of the origin of life has turned out to be much more difficult than I, and most other people, envisioned. ". His epoch-making experiment was performed in 1953 when he was a mere twenty-three year old undergraduate at the University of Chicago. Coincidentally, it was in the same year that another highly important research was successfully carried out, which was profoundly linked with the same issue. It related to the deciphering for the first time, by Watson and Crick, of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA together with RNA, constitute the fundamental bricks of life. This led to a much bigger challenge of envisioning how life could have resulted from some primitive forms of organic material, accidentally created as scientists believed, into such profoundly complex material. . The problems were manifold. Of the many questions raised, one was how and by what game of chance, inorganic material could convert into the preliminary organic material which is a prerequisite for building the bricks of life. . Returning to the early experiments of Urey, the first 357