Any discussion on the origin is life
is not complete without considering the primordial soup. There is no direct evidence of
the soup’s existence, and on purely theoretical ground it should not exist. If it did
exist, science can say with certainty that it was a very localized existence. That is it
may have been a small puddle, near a volcano, right at the entrance of a cave, near an
ocean or a river. The primitive ocean was definitely not the primordial soup. The ocean
could not possibly serve as the soup because it would dilute the biological precursors,
and it would not protect the precursors from ultraviolet light.
Many authors have criticized the concept of the soup. Its resilience in
biology text books is quite amazing given that so few scientists believe that it ever
existed.
"Accordingly, Abelson(1966), Hull(1960), Sillen(1965), and many others have
criticized the hypothesis that the primitive ocean, unlike the contemporary ocean, was a
"thick soup" containing all of the micromolecules required for the next stage of
molecular evolution. The concept of a primitive "thick soup" or "primordial
broth" is one of the most persistent ideas at the same time that is most strongly
contraindicated by thermodynamic reasoning and by lack of experimental support." -
Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose on page 37 in Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life.
"the primitive ocean was steadily irradiated with a relatively high dose of solar
ultraviolet light . . . A steady irradiation of a rather homogeneous solution results in
degradative rather than synthetic reactions" Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose in Molecular
Evolution and the Origin of Life.
"Based on the foregoing geochemical assessment, we conclude that both in the
atmosphere and in the various water basins of the primitive earth, many destructive
interactions would have so vastly diminished, if not altogether consumed, essential
precursor chemicals, that chemical evolution rates would have been negligible. The soup
would have been too dilute for polymerization to occur. Even local ponds for concentrating
soup ingredients would have met with the same problem.
Furthermore, no geological evidence indicates an organic soup, even a small organic pond,
ever existed on this planet. It is becoming clear that however life began on earth, the
usual conceived notion that life emerged from an oceanic soup of organic chemicals is a
most implausible hypothesis. We may therefore with fairness call this scenario the myth of
the prebiotic soup." - Thaxton, Bradley, Olsen on page 66 of The Mystery of Life's
Origin.
“Contrary to earlier suggestions that essentially all stages of chemical evolution
occurred in the open seas, it is now generally accepted that the concentration of the soup
was probably too small for efficient synthesis......”- Nissenbaum, Kenyon, Oro, in
the “Journal of Molecular Evolution,” 1975.
Furthermore, any organic compounds not destroyed by UV light would react to form an
insoluble polymer. This reaction known as the Maillard reaction would remove most of the
organic molecules in the soup making them unavailable for chemical evolution.
“ The rapid formation of this insoluble polymeric material would have removed the
bulk of the dissolved organic carbon from the primitive oceans and would thus have
prevented the formation of the organic soup.” - Nissenbaum, Kenyon, Oro, Journal of
Molecular Evolution, 1975.
In summary: 1) It is extremely difficult to create information and knowledge
before life exists. 2) Excessive investigator interference is required to make biological
subunits polymerize. 3) The prebiotic synthesis of the subunits required for DNA and RNA
(especially ribose and cytosine) presents some very serious challenges. 4) It is unlikely
that any single chemical can possess the required knowledge to replicate, because it must
not only know how to replicate, but it must also know how to use an energy source to drive
its own replication. 5) Any favorable environment for chemical evolution would have been
highly localized to a small puddle. 6) Because of the localized nature of the soup and the
low concentration of biological precursors, any robust self replicating system (i.e. Life)
would need the ability to synthesize many of the chemicals required for self replication.
Any self replicating system lacking this capability would not be able to survive much less
replicate.
Taken together the evidence suggests that the first living thing was not a
self replicating molecule, but rather a system of chemicals that contained the knowledge
required to replicate, and the ability to couple this replication to an energy source.
Furthermore, the scarcity of chemicals like ribose, adenine, and cytosine imply that for
this system to survive, it must have been able to synthesize many if not all such
chemicals from more abundant chemicals. All of these factors imply that the first living
thing was not that much simpler than life as it exists today. It may have even been more
complex.
The primordial soup is often envisioned as an evaporating pond next to
the ocean. The tides and waves continually bring new chemicals into the pond, the sun
evaporates the water concentrating the chemicals, and the chemicals polymerize into things
like RNA molecules. Thaxton discussed this myth at length in his out of print book: The
Mystery of Life's Origin. The basic problem is that the uv light destroys biological
molecules faster than it synthesizes them. And the salt in the ocean once concentrated
will prevent the polymerization of organic molcules (salt causes these molecules to
precipitate out of solution so that they are no longer available for polymerization), so the
picture below is not really the primordial soup. The primordial soup is a myth - it never
existed. I took this picture on Salt Cay in the Turks in Caicos.
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