In a groundbreaking experiment in the early 1950s, a scientist tried to re-create the conditions of early Earth in a test tube.
Stanley Miller added a few simple ingredients thought to be swirling in the young planet’s atmosphere and oceans to interconnected flasks, applied heat and zapped them with electricity to simulate lightning. The findings quickly became famous: Out of this primordial soup emerged amino acids, the chemical building blocks of life.
The discovery kick-started a quest within chemistry and biology to devise experiments that could help answer one of the biggest scientific questions facing humanity: How did life on Earth begin?
