Scientists at the University of Manchester (England) in pursuit of the origins of life–as all good chemists, molecular biologists, and prebioticists ought to be–believe they have hit upon the answer to a question that has long vexed them: if DNA and RNA are both too complicated to have “emerged from a seething soup of simple chemicals” (yum!) fully formed, what did bubble up out of that miasmic broth to generate conditions favorable for the creation of life on Earth? Not that they’d use the word “creation.” So, let’s call it “organism materialization” maybe, or how about “molecular engenderment”? Anyhow, as Agence-France Presse explains the theory, which appears in the latest issue of Nature,
Et voilà ! Life! Or, anyway, Organism! Of course, says AFP, “Opinions vary as to when the first organisms appeared on Earth.” Mmmhmm. Do they also vary, I wonder, as to where the glycolaldehyde, cyanmide, and phosphate–the aforementioned chemical soup–came from in the first place? And the gentle Sun and the cooling night? Can I read all about what–or Who–manufactured them in Nature, too?
