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Asked by anon-278725 on 1 Feb 2021.
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Michael Nolan answered on 1 Feb 2021:
Awesome question. Almost as difficult to answer as a question about the origin of the Universe!
We know single celled organisms were the first living things on Earth so I guess the question is how did they evolve?
It looks like you need a soup of organic molecules, heat, lightning, ammonia (nitrogen and hydrogen), methane (carbon and nitrogen) and water. When you combine them, you can produce amino acids (which make proteins). DNA probably takes longer to evolve, but at the same time, it is really just a large molecule.
For me (as a chemist/engineer) the question is how we can go from these molecules to something that evolves and reproduces and that’s where we don’t yet know. I haven’t seen anything in the lab that goes from a soup of amino acids to proteins for example.
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Graham Shields answered on 2 Feb 2021:
Great question. Recent thinking has turned to the bottom of the sea to answer this question. Earth is made of green (silicate) rocks that react with water, releasing hydrogen, which can go on to react with carbon dioxide to form simple organic molecules. This is similar to what some bacteria do even today. Some scientists think that the earliest ‘cells’ filled the holes in chimneys called ‘white smokers’ on the seafloor where this organic soup was being created and circulated, with reactions driven by the natural energy gradient between Earth’s hot interior and the cooler seawater.
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