Category: Consciousness and Evolution

In 1953, the same year that DNA was discovered, Mount Everest climbed and Queen Elizabeth crowned, a graduate student in Chicago passed an electrical spark through a mixture of methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulphide in close proximity to water. This was believed to correspond to a flash of lightning in earth’s early atmosphere. Within a few days the mixture contained some primitive amino acids—carbon-based organic compounds related to those the body utilises from our diet to build proteins. The media was very busy that year announcing that the mystery...