Re: Irony

On 12/15/24 10:10 PM, MarkE wrote:

I've raised Steven Benner's "tar paradox" in a recent post; it subsequently occurred to me that the Miller-Urey experiment is, ironically, a demonstration of this (I've mentioned this in a another thread, but thought it deserved a separate post). Miller-Urey produced only unusable small/trace amounts of amino acids in a "tar" mixture:
 Breakdown of products:
* Carboxylic Acids (e.g., formic acid, acetic acid, and succinic acid): These dominated the product mix, typically making up 80-90% of the total organic compounds.
* Hydroxy Acids (e.g., lactic acid and glycolic acid): Accounted for 5-10% of the total.
* Amino Acids: Typically contributed about 1-2% of the total organic product yield.
* Other Organic Molecules: Small amounts of urea, nitriles, aldehydes, and hydrocarbons were also formed, constituting the remainder of the products.
 Relative concentrations of amino acids produced:
- Glycine: Approximately 2.1% of the total yield
- Alanine: Around 1.7%
- β-Alanine: About 0.76%
- Aspartic Acid: Approximately 0.024%
- Glutamic Acid: Around 0.051%
 

The MIller-Urey experiment was important because it showed that complex molecules like amino acids could be formed naturally.  It wasn't a good approximation of the conditions necessary to make them is usable concentration.  The M-U process mostly produced tar.