Researchers have developed a new way of looking at a famous experiment that questions how the building blocks of life were formed "abiologically" on Earth.
Doctors Stanley Miller and Harold Urey first conducted the Miller-Urey Experiments back in 1953; they looked at how organic compounds responsible for forming life could have popped up in Earth's early days, a Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) news release reported.
The original study came up with an explanation for how amino acids (the "building blocks of life") could have been formed under these conditions.
"Miller was hesitant to encourage people to repeat the experiment due to the risk of inducing an explosion," Eric Parker who worked on the simplified procedure at Georgia Institute of Technology, said in the news release. "Often times, after reading a methods description it may not be fully clear how a certain research task was carried out...Therefore, this article was written to inform interested researchers how to conduct the experiment safely, in part, by giving precise instructions on evacuating [ignitable gasses like oxygen, methane and hydrogen from] the reaction apparatus before initiating the spark."
Despite Miller's warnings, researchers have been extremely interested in creating their own versions of the experiment.
Parker and his research team plan to publish a paper that compares their "spark-discharge experimental results" with the original "cyanamide spark-discharge" conclusion.
The team published their version of the experiment in the format that was used in the 1952 work, which was in "JoVE's signature step-by-step video format," the news release reported.
The researchers hope their video will encourage other scientists to take up their own "Miller-Urey type" experiment.
"Such efforts could help answer key questions in the origin of life field, such as which prebiotic conditions may have facilitated the synthesis of specific organic compounds believed to be important for life," Parker said, the news release reported.
