ORIGIN OF LIFE SC生命起源.912.L. G. Holmes Braddock .pptVIP

ORIGIN OF LIFESC.912.L.15.8 Intro This presentation is on benchmark SC.912.L15.8 which covers the origin of life on Earth. Origin of life research is the study of the beginnings and early development of life. We will also learn about scientific contributions from a few scientist. Scientific explanation of the origin of life on Earth Science shows us that the universe evolved by self-organization of matter towards more and more complex structures. The most common hypothesis in the scientific community, is that life began approximately 3.5 billion years ago as the result of a complex sequence of chemical reactions that took place spontaneously in Earths atmosphere. Scientific Explanations The earliest known life on Earth existed between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago. In the science community there have been many hypothesis thrown around to figure out how did life occur. But we can all conclude that it all started with a cell. Louis Pasteur Contributions Prior to the 1860s, when Louis Pasteur developed his germ theory of disease, the common consensus was that life could spontaneously generate. Today we know new life wont generate out of nothing, but this is due largely to Pasteurs work. Pasteur showed us that microorganisms, incapable of detection by human senses, live everywhere around us. Ironically, science has come back to explore this very concept as a possibility once more as one of two main competing explanations for the origin of life on Earth. No one can be sure which one adequately explains the origin of life on Earth, but amazingly, both have been shown to be possible. Alexander Oparin Contributions Oparin was primarily interested in how life initially began. There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter. Oparin thought that the infant Earth had possessed a strongly reducing atmosphere, containing methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor. In his opinion, these were the raw materials for the evolution of life. I