CREATION OF LIFE

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28162, 28 December 1956, Page 9

CREATION OF LIFE

Lightning Said To Be Cause (Rec. 9 p.m.) NEW YORK, Dec. 26. Lightning flashing through the gases of an eerie world could have started life on earth, Dr. Stanley Miller, a biochemist of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, said today. . The dazzling electric bolts could have created complex chemicals from the gases, he said. From these chemicals living matter may have come. This theory, and experiments to support it, were described in a speech by Dr. Miller at a session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Some of the latest scientific guesses about one of man’s most engrossing mysteries—how life began—were presented at a conference held by the association and the New York Academy of Science. Scientists in general think life began in the oceans. Somehow, organic or living chemicals were formed out of inorganic or nonliving chemicals. Poisonous Gases Some scientists, among them the Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Harold Urey, of Chicago, have suggested that the earth had an atmosphere of poisonous gases such as methane and ammonia, together with water and hydrogen. Lightning might have created the reaction which produced the chemicals for life to begin. Dr. Miller said he exposed just such a mixture of gases to a series of electric discharges for one week. The man-made “lightning” created some amino acids, the building blocks that make up proteins such as flesh, nerve and hair. Nine amino acids were formed from the gases. The electric discharges produced a mixture of aldehydes and hydrogen cyanide, Dr. Miller said. These reacted to form the amino acids. He said it appeared that the reactive organic compounds were formed by lightning and by ultra violet light in the atmosphere. Rains carried them down into the oceans, where they reacted to form amino acids and other complex organic compounds. Such reactions “would give a great many of the compounds that are components of present living organisms,” he said.