Describe the miller-urey experiment and its major conclusions.
1 Answer
Firstly this experiment was a simulation experiment, to prove molecular evolution of life. Conditions were simulated in this experiment which were that of primitive earth.
Urey and Miller experimentally proved the formation of simple ORGANIC compounds from other simple compounds under specified conditions.
1) They created a methane-ammonia-hydrogen and water mixture to simulate the PRIMORDIAL ATMOSPHERE
2) They subjected the above mixture to a spark of 75,000 volts, this simulated the lightening of primitive earth
3) Then they provided temperature of 800 degrees Celsius
So basically, the methane-ammonia-hydrogen mixture was taken in ratio of 2:2:1 along with all these heated products and were passed through a condenser which on condensation yielded aqueous end products.
The end products contained : amino acids, aldehydes etc. all major organic compounds which are precursors for life.
Amino acids as we know are essential precursors of nucleic acids.
