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Question
What information can be used to challenge Miller and Urey's experiment?
I find it curious that you want to "challenge" the Miller-Urey experiment, in which a wide varity of organic compounds were synthesized by applying energy (electrical or ultraviolet discharge) to a mixture of water, hydrogen, methane, and ammonia. The experiment has been repeated and the results verified thousands of times in labs all over the world. It was one of the important steps toward our modern understanding of the chemistry of the early Earth, even though we now think the Earth's orginal atmosphere had a somewhat diffferent composition. Do you really think that Miller and Urey, or the thousands of scientists and students who have repeated the experiment, made a mistake? It is fine to challenge experiments or theories if there is evidence to contradict them, but challenging the Miller-Urey results seems like a pretty hopeless task to me.
David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
November 7, 2003
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