One of the main problems that arises for anyone who tries to imagine how life could arise on the primitive earth is to adapt our brain, used to measure time in hours, days or even years, to the scale of geologic time. Our planet is about 4,500 million years and the emergence of the earliest forms of life was about 2,500 million years and years. Try to prove any hypothesis in the laboratory is not easy because no scientist has the millions of years nature has been to produce a primitive cell capable of tapping ambient energy to survive and self-replicate. On May 20 he died of a heart attack, Stanley Miller, one of the leading scientists in studies on the origin of life who tried to recreate the original atmosphere of the earth reducing in a "gimmick" of glass in the laboratory. This "gas cloud" in the flask was subjected to electric shocks with two electrodes for several days, simulating prebiotic lightning storm. After some time we noted the appearance in these conditions, at the bottom of the container of organic substances such as amino acids or nucleotides that are present in our cells. These results were a great support for the hypotheses that assume that on our planet, at some point, just over 2,500 million years were given circumstances to arise in the atmosphere or in certain pockets marine molecules that assembled to create the vital machinery of what is now known as cells, ie the basic unit of life. Long before we know how, but at least we can try to imagine.
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