2003, Oceanography 16(3):98–104, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2003.38

Origins of Life

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Author

Jeffrey L. Bada | Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, California, USA

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First Paragraph

May 15, 2003 marked the fiftieth anniversary of a paper published in the journal I that revolutionized our thinking about one of the fundamental scientific questions that confronts humanity-how did life began on Earth? The paper was authored by Stanley L. Miller (1953), at that time a graduate student of Nobel Laureate Harold Urey's at the University of Chicago. The experiment described in his paper demonstrated how, by using a simple apparatus designed to mimic the ocean-atmosphere system of Earth, could be used to synthesize essential biological compounds such as amino acids. If a similar type of process had taken place on early Earth, this could have produced the raw materials needed for the origin of life.

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Full Article

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Citation

Bada, J.L. 2003. Origins of life. Oceanography 16(3):98–104, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2003.38.

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