how was life created from nonliving things?

Question

and does this mean we can recreate this process to manipulate life into whatever we want?

In: 186

Answer 1

Imagine you have a soup filled with lots of different chemicals.

You leave it for a *very* long time.

Some of the chemicals combine together in a shape that makes it easier for other chemicals to combine in the same shape.

You leave it for a *very* long time.

Some of the shape-y chemicals stick to another chemical that makes it *even easier* for other chemicals to combine in the same shape.

You leave it for a *very* long time.

The last step keeps happening in different ways, each time the resulting mix gets better at making more of itself.

You leave it for a *very* long time.

You have something approaching primitive life.

Edit: We’ve done experiments that involve sealing a soup in a container and doing things like warming it and passing electricity through it that hint at the very first stages of the above process, but to do the whole thing takes a *very* long time and we don’t have a good way of simulating time passing very quickly to do that.

We’re doing other experiments that involve cutting existing life into tiny bits and reassembling those bits to make something that does what we want, this is an ongoing area of research.