Eideard

Stanley Miller gained fame with his 1953 experiment showing the synthesis of organic compounds thought to be important in setting the origin of life in motion. Five years later, he produced samples from a similar experiment, shelved them and, as far as friends and colleagues know, never returned to them in his lifetime.

50 years later, Jeffrey Bada, Miller’s former student and a current Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego professor of marine chemistry, discovered the samples in Miller’s laboratory material and made a discovery that represents a potential breakthrough in the search for the processes that created Earth’s first life forms…

“Much to our surprise the yield of amino acids is a lot richer than any experiment (Miller) had ever conducted,” said Bada.

The new findings support the case that volcanoes – a major source of atmospheric hydrogen sulfide today – accompanied by lightning converted simple gases into a wide array of amino acids, which are were in turn available for assembly into early proteins…

“Unbeknownst to him, he’d already done it in 1958,” said Bada.

The Bada lab is gearing up to repeat Miller’s classic experiments later this year. With modern equipment including a miniaturized microwave spark apparatus, experiments that took the elder researcher weeks to carry out could be completed in a day, Bada said.

Delightful find, research that panicked True Believers hits the news once again.

Not that this will appear on the front page of your newspaper, tomorrow. Or TV news. But, it did in 1953.