Re: Precambrian Atmosphere, again

Brian D. Harper (harper.10@osu.edu)
Sat, 18 Jan 1997 23:59:56 -0500

At 10:40 PM 1/18/97 -0800, Art wrote:
[...]
>>
>>My understanding is that present wisdom indicates that
>>the Earth's atmosphere never was reducing, even at the
>>time of the origin of life (somewhere between 3.5 and 4.0
>>billion years ago). IMHO, this is a major nail in the coffin
>>of classical soup theory since Miller-Urey experiments
>>have at least 2 orders of magnitude smaller yields of amino
>>acids in neutral and mildly reducing atmospheres.
>
>And this is not neutral or mildly reducing. The author emphasizes
>repeatedly that his percentage is a minimum, and likely there was more O2
>than that.

Well, I think we all know what would happen if a Miller-Urey
experiment was conducted in an oxidizing atmosphere. I guess
that's why we have grad students ;-).

Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
Ohio State University