Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 369
ORIGIN OF LIFE – DIFFERENT THEORIES AND PROPOSITIONS samples of laboratory test tube experiments were critically re-examined by many scientists. Some of them discovered grave flaws in Miller's experiment, taking some lustre off the hitherto much glorified exercise. . One major objection levelled at his experiment was that it was carried out in a simple flask and test-tube apparatus. The water substituting sea water was kept at boiling temperature while the natural conditions could not have admitted to such a proposition. This should have required the constantly controlled boiling of sea water over billions of years. . Some scientists would much rather have a cold start for the synthesis of life than the wet start proposed by. Miller. They were inclined towards favouring the synthesis of organic material based on solid state chemistry rather than on the boiling water scenario. . Some went even further to suggest that the preliminary organic chemicals need not have been created here on earth. To support this view, they referred to the study of meteoritic rocks some of which are known to have contained many amino acids. In fact, the controlled experiment of Miller could produce only thirty-five amino acids as against the fifty-two counted during the analytical study of material from space. But those in favour of a 'wet start', originating in the sea water, raised many counterobjections against this proposition. One such objection relates to the well-known phenomenon of atmospheric friction which must have generated an immense amount of heat as the meteorites entered the earth's atmosphere. Such friction can raise the temperature of the intruding rocks so high as to set them ablaze. Hence all organic material carried by the burning rock should have disintegrated in mid-air before reaching the earth. The evidence of amino acids found in meteoric rock, according to the critics, could 358