Running head: CHECKPOINT: ORIGIN OF LIFE 1

CheckPoint: Origin of Life

Tiffany Nicole Cooper

University of Phoenix

SCI

230

Luciana Robinson

February 08, 2011

 CheckPoint: Origin of Life

Since the beginning, people have wondered where we come from, how we were created,

and how did our lives originate? When wondering how life was created, there are two main

options that people can believe in; either they can believe that life was created by natural process

or they can believe that there is one creator (God). Over the years, science has come up with

many plausible theories of how we may have been created.

A theory that I have always been fascinated with is the Panspermia theory, also known as

the Cosmozoa Theory, and it is the theory that suggests that life was brought to this Earth from

cosmic bodies (meteorites). This theory would also suggest that there is life in other parts of the

universe where there are suitable enough environments to live in. It would further suggest that

an organism was resistant enough to make the travel and was not affected by the extreme

amounts of cold, radiation, and heat that the meteorite would encounter while traveling through

space. “[This theory goes onto state that after the organisms arrived safely; they became protein

from amino acids, and eventually evolved into life. They would then grow and reproduce,

possibly in a warm ocean or pond, or maybe even underground.]” (Tripod 2011) Because this

theory assumes that life exist somewhere else in this universe, this theory does not help us

explain it origin or how life was created somewhere else. It only explains how life appeared on

earth. There is evidence to back up some of this theory. The fact that scientist have studied

meteoroids and found that they have the basic build up needed to contain life; amino acids,

bacteria, and carbon.

In the text, it talks about how “Earth’s early atmosphere was considerably different from

today’s, containing much more carbon dioxide and nearly no free oxygen.” (Pruitt, N. L., &
Underwood, L. S. 2006). With no oxygen on the Earth, there would have not been an ozone layer

in the outer atmosphere to help protect the Earth from the sun’s deadly ultraviolet radiation. This

would have coincided with A. I. Oparin, and J. B. S. Haldane’s theory of Chemical Evolution of

life (or the origins of life theory). Oparin and Haldane speculated back in the 1920’s to the

1930’s that the Earth’s atmosphere had an abundance of methane, ammonia, nitrogen, water

vapor, and, perhaps, free-hydrogen. With all the different atmospheric chemicals, Oparin and

Haldane thought that this would have caused a stimulated chemical reaction. Because amino

acids are the building blocks of proteins, their theory is that this would have all happen

spontaneously.

A student at the University of Chicago named Stanley Miller decided to

take the Oparin-

Haldane theory (also known as the chemical theory of life) and try to prove
or disprove it by

creating a device that contained gas’s that he thought were most likely to be
present in the earth’s

early atmosphere. Then, so that he could stimulate the UV rays that were
present then, he passed

an electrical discharge through the device. After only one week the
previously colorless solution

inside of the device was red. Miller then took the contents and analyzed
them finding that most

of the organic molecules could not be identified in any database we had. This
experiment proved

that Oparin and Haldane’s theory that organic compounds could have been created in the early

atmosphere.
 REFERENCE PAGE:

Tripod (2011). Panspermia Theory. Retrieved from http://leiwenwu.tripod.com/panspermia.htm

Pruitt, N. L., & Underwood, L. S. (2006). Bioinquiry: Making connections in biology (3rd ed.).
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

TutorNext. (2008). tutorNext. Retrieved from http://www.tutornext.com/theory-panspermia-

cosmozoa-life-outer-space/12721