How did life form from non-living matter (abiogenesis)?
In: Biology
We don’t know, but we’re working on it
One thing we have discovered is that organic compounds like amino acids seem to form naturally when the conditions are right. The basic building blocks of life seem to be common place in the universe.
In the ancient oceans of earth, where there was a high mineral content and a lot of heat, these acids and other molecules possibly formed in large quantities and eventually random interactions created RNA.
Life may have started and died off thousands or millions of times until random chance created molecules of the right combination to self-replicate.
If that’s the case then the formation of life may be trivial, meaning that it’s just a side effect of being in our universe.
Latest Answers