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We
don’t have the answer to this question but we can
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speculate. It seems likely that simple organic
molecules
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formed
from the earths primordial soup. The
atmosphere
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may
have been reducing (as opposed to oxidizing as it is
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today). Experiments carried out in the 1950s
demonstrated
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that
when simple compounds, H2O NH3 CH4 and H2
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were
exposed to electric discharge for about a week many
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more
complex molecules formed, including some amino
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acids
(aspartic, glutamic, alanine and glycine).
The theory
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continues
that somehow these molecules polymerized
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making
more complex molecules which eventually were
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enclosed
in a membrane. The critical step is
the formation
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of
molecules that could use complementation to form
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copies of
themselves, thus allowing for inheritance.
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