New Study Revisits Miller-Urey Experiment at the Quantum Level

For the first time, researchers have reproduced the results of the Miller-Urey experiment in a computer simulation, yielding new insight into the effect of electricity on the formation of life’s building blocks at the quantum level.

In 1953, American chemist Stanley Miller had famously electrified a mixture of simple gas and water to simulate lightning and the atmosphere of early Earth. The revolutionary experiment—which yielded a brownish soup of amino acids—offered a simple potential scenario for the origin of life’s building blocks. Miller’s work gave birth to modern research on pre-biotic chemistry and the origins of life.

For the past 60 years, scientists have investigated other possible energy sources for the formation of life’s building blocks, including ultra violet light, meteorite impacts, and deep sea hydrothermal vents.

In this new study, Antonino Marco Saitta, of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Sorbonne, in Paris, France and his colleagues wanted to revisit Miller’s result with electric fields, but from a quantum perspective.