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In 1953 quite a bit of excitement was generated when Science magazine published a brief research paper entitled "A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Earth Conditions" by Stanley L. Miller. In the paper, Miller described how he zapped a flask filled with methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor with an electrical charge. The gas mixture simulated Earth's atmosphere thought to exist about 3 billion years ago when life first sprang into existence. The vapor condensed and drained back into a water reservoir. In a week, the water was filled with organic compounds, including amino acids, essential to sustain life.

The press releases and media reports that followed made it sound as though creation of life from scratch was a cakewalk. The implication was that the universe must be teeming with life. The news broke just after a wave of UFO sightings in the United States in 1952, including a spectacular sighting over Washington D.C. These prompted the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Air Force each to begin formal investigations into the phenomenon (the Robertson Panel and Project Blue Book). Miller's experiment seemed to fit neatly into this mystery and led to an inescapable conclusion. We are not alone!

The excitement aroused by Stanley Miller's initial experiment cooled in the succeeding decades. No progress was made to determine how the experiment's raw organic molecules might have taken the next step and become animate, reproductive life. Even worse, the prevailing scientific models for early Earth's atmosphere changed. Hydrogen, it was now theorized, would have escaped Earth's atmosphere before life appeared, and without hydrogen Miller's experiment failed to produce the required amino acids. Scientists studying the origins of life turned to other, more exotic theories. Miller's experiment began to seem irrelevant, a mere curiosity, even though it established the breakthrough revelation that no barrier separated inorganic from organic matter. Organic matter such as amino acids can spontaneously be created from inorganic material with help from a natural energy source such as lightning.

It takes more than amino acids, though, to make life. It takes an extreme amount of organization. How extreme? The answer is mind boggling.

Amino acids are assembled into protein molecules in living cells. DNA does the assembling in living cells, but DNA doesn't function outside of living cells. To create life where none existed before the amino acids would have

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