By ANURADHA K. HERATH - PHYSORG.COM
Added: Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:00:00 UTC

Thanks to SPS for the link.
http://www.physorg.com/news171263002.html

The new hypothesis suggests that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically-active porous structures made of zinc sulfide similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Credit: The Institute for Exploration, the University of Rhode Island (URI) Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO), and the URI Institute for Archaeological Oceanography.

The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, was capable of producing amino acids, the building blocks of life, from inorganic substances.

Now, more than 55 years later, two scientists are proposing a hypothesis that could add a new dimension to the debate on how life on Earth developed.

Armen Mulkidjanian of the University of Osnabrueck, Germany and Michael Galperin of the U.S. National Institutes of Health present their hypothesis and evidence in two papers published and open for review in the web site Biology Direct.
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TAGGED: EVOLUTION, SCIENCE, SPACE