In 1953 Stanley Miller ran sparks through a sealed flask of gas for days and got amino acids. But amino acids are not life: from simple molecules to polymers, to self-replicating chains, to a membrane-bounded protocell is four rungs, and no rung leads automatically to the next. The RNA world, hydrothermal vents, lipid vesicles — each line has experiments showing one piece is feasible. Nobody has yet reconstructed the complete chain from non-living chemistry to the first cell, so the competing hypotheses still stand side by side.
In 1953 Stanley Miller ran sparks through a sealed flask of gas for days and got amino acids. But amino acids are not life: from simple molecules to polymers, to self-replicating chains, to a membrane-bounded protocell is four rungs, and no rung leads automatically to the next. The RNA world, hydrothermal vents, lipid vesicles — each line has experiments showing one piece is feasible. Nobody has yet reconstructed the complete chain from non-living chemistry to the first cell, so the competing hypotheses still stand side by side.
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