Theoretical origin of life: pure chemicals cheat (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 21, 2021, 15:32 (979 days ago) @ David Turell

Only impure chemicals could have been present on early Earth:

https://evolutionnews.org/2021/08/tonight-new-long-story-short-video-delivers-a-dose-of...

"Experiments to produce the building blocks of life always begin with unnaturally pure, concentrated reagents. These are purchased from laboratory supply shops and produced through sophisticated, intelligently designed processes. For example, in a 2008 publication, Stanley Miller and his graduate student Jeff Bada reported using a mixture of nitrogen gas and CO2 to produce some amino acids. They described the starting materials this way:

"Medical grade nitrogen gas (purity > 99.99% N2) and industrial grade carbon dioxide (claimed by the manufacturer to contain no more than 10 ppm impurities) were purchased from Airgas.

"Where on a prebiotic Earth could you find gasses with no more than 10-parts-per-million impurity? Airgas, the supplier from which the researchers obtained their materials, was not around at the time. I recognize that the motivation to work with such unnaturally pure reagents was to avoid criticism that the experiment was contaminated. However, after succeeding in producing some amino acids from these ingredients, the team of scientists claimed success and moved on.

"And that’s a problem. In my own research on heart disease, the gap between an initial proof of concept (e.g., success in a petri dish experiment) and the practical, widespread application of a new heart failure therapy can be enormous. If I stopped working after proof of concept, publishing only my initial findings but extrapolating the results to claim sweeping success in curing heart failure, I could rightly be accused of academic fraud. The origin-of-life research community is clearly held to a different standard.

"In chemical reactions, the amount of product produced commonly depends on the concentration of the reagents. This is known as Le Chatelier’s principle. Unnaturally concentrated reagents drive the reaction to produce more product. As origin-of-life researcher Pier Luigi Luisi has said:

"[C]oncentration can indeed be seen as a chemical constraint in the origin of life, since chemistry cannot operate below a certain threshold of concentration.

"On a prebiotic Earth, though, with lower concentrations of reagents and plenty of impurities, Miller and Bada’s reaction may not have produced any appreciable amino acid product at all."

Comment: papers on OOL never mention this. We can view all studies of origin of life as really fraudulent attempts. Discount all exuberant takes.