The Miller and Urey abiotic synthesis experiment (and subsequent, similar experiments) showed that __________.

SCIENTIFIC THINKING When Stanley Miller's experiment was published in 1953, his results made global headlines. The general public thought Miller had answered the question of how life on Earth began by creating life in a test tube. However, scientists understood that Miller's experiment was neither a final answer nor a recipe for life. Rather, it was the first test of a long-standing hypothesis about the origin of life. Write an essay describing how the process of science progresses over time toward understanding how nature works.

Why is the four-stage hypothesis for the abiotic origin of life useful?

The early atmosphere on Earth is thought to have lacked which of the following gases?

Currently scientists think the early atmosphere probably consisted of __________.

The early atmosphere may not have been as reducing as originally postulated by Haldane, Oparin, Miller, and Urey. In light of current thinking about the composition of the early atmosphere, what is regarded as a likely place for the abiotic synthesis of organic molecules to have occurred?

Abiotically produced vesicles display which of the following rudimentary qualities necessary for life?

Many researchers now believe that the first self-replicating molecules were __________.

A radioactive isotope has a half-life of 1.2 billion years. As measured by the presence of the isotope and its stable decay product, a rock originally contained 10 grams of the radioactive isotope and now contains 1.25 grams. Approximately how many years old is the rock?