In the last two centuries, Science has answered many questions about nature and the laws that govern it. We’ve been able to research galaxies and the atoms that make up matter. We’ve built machines that can compute and solve problems that no human can work out. We’ve solved age old problems in Mathematics and created theories that gave maths new problems. This article, however, is not about these achievements. It’s about those problems in science that have left scientists scratching their heads, wondering if they’ll ever yell, “Eureka!”
The Origin of Life
We’ve always been obsessed with studying about the possibility of life on other planets, but another question that has baffled scientists even more is how exactly did life as we know it originate on Earth? Though answering this question will have little practical application, the path to the answer could lead to several interesting discoveries in fields varying from microbiology to astrophysics.
Scientists believe that the key to understanding the origin of life could be in finding out how two of life’s characteristic features – reproduction and genetic transfer − could have begun as processes involving molecules that have the ability to replicate. This led to the formation of the popular ‘primordial soup’ theory, according to which the early Earth somehow had a mixture, a sort of broth of molecules, that were energised by solar energy and electrical storms. Over a long period of time, these molecules would have reacted to form the more complex organic structures that make up life. This theory was buoyed by the famous Miller-Urey experiment, wherein the duo succeeded in creating amino acid by passing electrical discharges through a blend of simpler elements such as methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen. The discovery of DNA and RNA, however, doused the initial excitement as it seemed impossible that the complex and elegant structure of DNA could have risen from a primitive soup of chemicals.
