Lifes rocky start essays

Life's rocky start essays Lifes Rocky Start is an intriguing piece about the role that rocks played in the beginning of life on a once uninhabited earth. The article was written by Robert Hazen and was featured in the April 2001 edition of Scientific American. He has been a part of a highly trained team of specialists at Carnegie Institution of Washingtons Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, D.C. since 1976. This institution is a private, nonprofit organization involved in basic research and advanced education in the earth sciences. It is a world-renowned laboratory that has led the way in petrology and research for earth science. Over the years, Robert Hazen and his team of experts have conducted many experiments regarding the relationship between the start of life on this planet and rocks. Most of their knowledge can be attributed to the findings of earlier scientists such as Stanley L. Miller. Miller performed many experiments trying to connect minerals with ocean temperatures and the atmosphere. In 1998, with these findings, Hazen and his team started an experiment of their own and took place in the Carnegie laboratory. To help their idea that minerals might have sheltered the ingredients of life, an experiment was conducted in which the amino acid leucine broke down within a matter of minutes in pressurized water at 200 degrees Celsius. But once the iron sulfide was added to the mix, the amino acid stayed together for days. This next experiment conducted in the Spring of 2000 was much more intricate compared to the first one. After they came across the mineral, calcite; a common mineral that forms marble and limestone because it presents brilliant pairs of mirror image faces, they had also discovered that the chemical structure of calcite allowed mollusk shells to strongly bond with amino acids. This set off the need for an experiment regarding these calcite surfaces. Their hypothesis became that calcite surfa...