Describe the Miller experiment and explain its importance

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

An important experiment performed by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1952 sought to recreate the conditions in which life on Earth began. The Miller experiment consisted of a sterile, sealed glass container holding water, hydrogen, ammonia, and methane. An electric arc inside the apparatus created sparks to simulate the effects of lightning in Earth's early atmosphere.Miller and Urey let the experiment run for a week and then analyzed the material inside. They found that the interaction between the electric arc and the simulated atmosphere had produced many organic molecules from the raw material of the experiment, including such important building blocks of life as amino acids. When the experiment was run again using different energy sources such as hot silica to represent molten lava spilling into the ocean, similar molecules were produced. Even the amount of UV radiation present in sunlight is sufficient to produce complex organic molecules.According to updated models of the formation of the Solar System and Earth, Earth's early atmosphere probably consisted mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor instead of the mix of hydrogen, ammonia, and methane assumed by Miller and Urey. When gases corresponding to the newer understanding of the early Earth atmosphere are processed in a Miller apparatus, lesser but still significant numbers of organic molecules are created.The Miller experiment is important because it shows that complex organic molecules form naturally in a wide variety of circumstances. Lightning, sunlight, and hot lava pouring into the oceans are just some of the energy sources that can naturally rearrange simple common molecules into the complex molecules that make life possible.