Theories about the origin of Solar System

Formation hypothesis
French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was the first to propose a model for the origin of the
Solar System in his Le Monde (ou Traité de lumière) which he wrote in 1632 and 1633 and for which he delayed
publication because of the Inquisition and it was published only after his death in 1664. In his view, the Universe
was filled with vortices of swirling particles and the Sun and planets had condensed from a particularly large
vortex that had somehow contracted, which explained the circular motion of the planets and was on the right
track with condensation and contraction. However, this was before Newton's theory of gravity and we now know
matter does not behave in this fashion.
The vortex model of 1944, formulated by German physicist and philosopher Baron Carl Friedrich von
Weizsäcker, which harkens back to the Cartesian model, involved a pattern of turbulence-induced eddies in a
Laplacian nebular disc. In it a suitable combination of clockwise rotation of each vortex and anti-clockwise
rotation of the whole system can lead to individual elements moving around the central mass in Keplerian orbits
so there would be little dissipation of energy due to the overall motion of the system but material would be
colliding at high relative velocity in the inter-vortex boundaries and in these regions small roller-bearing eddies
would coalesce to give annular condensations. It was much criticized as turbulence is a phenomenon associated
with disorder and would not spontaneously produce the highly ordered structure required by the hypothesis. As
well, it does not provide a solution to the angular momentum problem and does not explain lunar formation nor
other very basic characteristics of the Solar System.
The Weizsäcker model was modified in 1948 by Dutch theoretical physicist Dirk Ter Haar, in that regular eddies
were discarded and replaced by random turbulence which would lead to a very thick nebula where gravitational
instability would not occur. He concluded the planets must have formed by accretion and explained the
compositional difference (solid and liquid planets) as due to the temperature difference between the inner and
outer regions, the former being hotter and the latter being cooler, so only refractories (non-volatiles) condensed
in the inner region. A major difficulty is that in this supposition turbulent dissipation takes place in a time scale of
only about a millennium which does not give enough time for planets to form.
The nebular hypothesis was first proposed in 1734 by Emanuel Swedenborg and later elaborated and expanded
upon by Immanuel Kant in 1755. A similar theory was independently formulated by Pierre-Simon Laplace in
1796.
In 1749, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon conceived the idea that the planets were formed when a comet
collided with the Sun, sending matter out to form the planets. However, Laplace refuted this idea in 1796, showing
that any planets formed in such a way would eventually crash into the Sun. Laplace felt that the near-circular
orbits of the planets were a necessary consequence of their formation. Today, comets are known to be far too
small to have created the Solar System in this way.
In 1755, Immanuel Kant speculated that observed nebulae may in fact be regions of star and planet formation.
In 1796, Laplace elaborated by arguing that the nebula collapsed into a star, and, as it did so, the remaining
material gradually spun outward into a flat disc, which then formed the planets.

Alternative theories
However plausible it may appear at first sight, the nebular hypothesis still faces the obstacle of angular
momentum; if the Sun had indeed formed from the collapse of such a cloud, the planets should be rotating far
more slowly. The Sun, though it contains almost 99.9 percent of the system's mass, contains just 1 percent of
its angular momentum.This means that the Sun should be spinning much more rapidly.
Tidal theory
Attempts to resolve the angular momentum problem led to the temporary abandonment of the nebular hypothesis
in favour of a return to "two-body" theories. For several decades, many astronomers preferred the tidal or near-
collision hypothesis put forward by James Jeans in 1917, in which the planets were considered to have been
formed due to the approach of some other star to the Sun. This near-miss would have drawn large amounts of
matter out of the Sun and the other star by their mutual tidal forces, which could have then condensed into
planets. However, in 1929 astronomer Harold Jeffreys countered that such a near-collision was massively
unlikely. Objections to the hypothesis were also raised by the American astronomer Henry Norris Russell, who
showed that it ran into problems with angular momentum for the outer planets, with the planets struggling to
avoid being reabsorbed by the Sun.
The Chamberlin-Moulton model
Forest Moulton in 1900 had also shown that the nebular hypothesis was inconsistent with observations because
of the angular momentum. Moulton and Chamberlin in 1904 originated the planetesimal hypothesis
(see Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis). Along with many astronomers of the day they came to
believe the pictures of "spiral nebulas" from the Lick Observatory were direct evidence of forming solar systems.
These turned out to be galaxies instead but the Shapley-Curtis debate about these was still 16 years in the
future. One of the most fundamental issues in the history of astronomy was distinguishing between nebulas and
galaxies.
Moulton and Chamberlin suggested that a star had passed close to the Sun early in its life to cause tidal bulges
and that this, along with the internal process that leads to solar prominences, resulted in the ejection of filaments
of matter from both stars. While most of the material would have fallen back, part of it would remain in orbit. The
filaments cooled into numerous, tiny, solid fragments, ‘planetesimals’, and a few larger protoplanets. This model
received favourable support for about 3 decades but passed out of favour by the late '30s and was discarded in
the '40s by the realization it was incompatible with the angular momentum of Jupiter, but a part of it, planetesimal
accretion, was retained.
Lyttleton's scenario
In 1937 and 1940, Ray Lyttleton postulated that a companion star to the Sun collided with a passing star. Such
a scenario was already suggested and rejected by Henry Russell in 1935. Lyttleton showed terrestrial planets
were too small to condense on their own so suggested one very large proto-planet broke in two because of
rotational instability, forming Jupiter and Saturn, with a connecting filament from which the other planets formed.
A later model, from 1940 and 1941, involves a triple star system, a binary plus the Sun, in which the binary
merges and later breaks up because of rotational instability and escapes from the system leaving a filament that
formed between them to be captured by the Sun. Objections of Lyman Spitzer apply to this model also.
Band-structure model
In 1954, 1975, and 1978 Swedish astrophysicist Hannes Alfvén included electromagnetic effects in equations of
particle motions, and angular momentum distribution and compositional differences were explained. In 1954 he
first proposed the band structure in which he distinguished an A-cloud, containing mostly helium, but with some
solid- particle impurities ("meteor rain"), a B-cloud, with mostly hydrogen, a C-cloud, having mainly carbon, and
a D-cloud, made mainly of silicon and iron. Impurities in the A-cloud form Mars and the Moon (later captured by
Earth), in the B-cloud they condense into Mercury, Venus, and Earth, in the C-cloud they condense into the outer
planets, and Pluto and Triton may have formed from the D-cloud.
Interstellar cloud theory
In 1943, the Soviet astronomer Otto Schmidt proposed that the Sun, in its present form, passed through a
dense interstellar cloud, emerging enveloped in a cloud of dust and gas, from which the planets eventually
formed. This solved the angular momentum problem by assuming that the Sun's slow rotation was peculiar to it,
and that the planets did not form at the same time as the Sun. Extensions of the model, together forming the
Russian school, include Gurevich and Lebedinsky (in 1950), Safronov (in 1967,1969), Safronov and Vityazeff
(in 1985), Safronov and Ruskol (in 1994), and Ruskol (in 1981), among others [ However, this hypothesis was
severely dented by Victor Safronov who showed that the amount of time required to form the planets from such
a diffuse envelope would far exceed the Solar System's determined age.
Ray Lyttleton modified the theory by showing that a 3rd body was not necessary and proposing that a mechanism
of line accretion described by Bondi and Hoyle in 1944 would enable cloud material to be captured by the star
(Williams and Cremin, 1968, loc. cit.)
Hoyle's hypothesis
In this model] (from 1944) the companion went nova with ejected material captured by the Sun and planets
forming from this material. In a version a year later it was a supernova. In 1955 he proposed a similar system to
Laplace, and with more mathematical detail in 1960. It differs from Laplace in that a magnetic torque occurs
between the disk and the Sun, which comes into effect immediately or else more and more matter would be
ejected resulting in a much too massive planetary system, one comparable to the Sun. The torque causes a
magnetic coupling and acts to transfer angular momentum from the Sun to the disk. The magnetic field strength
would have to be 1 gauss. The existence of torque depends on magnetic lines of force being frozen into the disk
(a consequence of a well-known MHD (magnetohydrodynamic) theorem on frozen-in lines of force). As the solar
condensation temperature when the disk was ejected could not be much more than 1000 degrees K., a number
of refractories must be solid, probably as fine smoke particles, which would grow with condensation and
accretion. These particles would be swept out with the disk only if their diameter at the Earth's orbit was less
than 1 meter so as the disk moved outward a subsidiary disk consisting of only refractories remains behind
where the terrestrial planets would form. The model is in good agreement with the mass and composition of the
planets and angular momentum distribution provided the magnetic coupling is an acceptable idea, but not
explained are twinning, the low mass of Mars and Mercury, and the planetoid belts. It was Alfvén who formulated
the concept of frozen-in magnetic field lines.
Kuiper's theory
Gerard Kuiper (in 1944) argued, like Ter Haar, that regular eddies would be impossible and postulated that large
gravitational instabilities might occur in the solar nebula, forming condensations. In this, the solar nebula could
be either co-genetic with the Sun or captured by it. Density distribution would determine what could form: either
a planetary system or a stellar companion. The 2 types of planets were assumed to be due to the Roche limit.
No explanation was offered for the Sun's slow rotation which Kuiper saw as a larger G-star problem.
Whipple's theory
In Fred Whipple's 1948 scenario a smoke cloud about 60,000 AU in diameter and with 1 solar mass (M☉)
contracts and produces the Sun. It has a negligible angular momentum thus accounting for the Sun's similar
property. This smoke cloud captures a smaller 1 with a large angular momentum. The collapse time for the large
smoke and gas nebula is about 100 million years and the rate is slow at first, increasing in later stages. The
planets would condense from small clouds developed in, or captured by, the 2nd cloud, the orbits would be
nearly circular because accretion would reduce eccentricity due to the influence of the resisting medium, orbital
orientations would be similar because the small cloud was originally small and the motions would be in a common
direction. The protoplanets might have heated up to such high degrees that the more volatile compounds would
have been lost and the orbital velocity decreases with increasing distance so that the terrestrial planets would
have been more affected. The weaknesses of this scenario are that practically all the final regularities are
introduced as a priori assumptions and most of the hypothesizing was not supported by quantitative calculations.
For these reasons it did not gain wide acceptance.
Urey's model
American chemist Harold Urey, who founded cosmochemistry, put forward a scenario in 1951, 1952, 1956, and
1966 based largely on meteorites and using Chandrasekhar's stability equations and obtained density
distribution in the gas and dust disk surrounding the primitive Sun. In order that volatile elements like mercury
could be retained by the terrestrial planets he postulated a moderately thick gas and dust halo shielding the
planets from the Sun. In order to form diamonds, pure carbon crystals, Moon-size objects, gas spheres that
became gravitationally unstable, would have to form in the disk with the gas and dust dissipating at a later stage.
Pressure fell as gas was lost and diamonds were converted to graphite, while the gas became illuminated by the
Sun. Under these conditions considerable ionization would be present and the gas would be accelerated by
magnetic fields, hence the angular momentum could be transferred from the Sun. He postulated that these lunar-
size bodies were destroyed by collisions, with the gas dissipating, leaving behind solids collected at the core,
with the resulting smaller fragments pushed far out into space and the larger fragments staying behind and
accreting into planets. He suggested the Moon was just such a surviving core.
Protoplanet theory
In 1960, 1963, and 1978, W. H. McCrea proposed the protoplanet theory, in which the Sun and planets
individually coalesced from matter within the same cloud, with the smaller planets later captured by the Sun's
larger gravity. It includes fission in a protoplanetary nebula and there is no solar nebula. Agglomerations of
floccules (which are presumed to compose the supersonic turbulence assumed to occur in the interstellar
material from which stars are born) formed the Sun and protoplanets, the latter splitting to form planets. The 2
portions can not remain gravitationally bound to each other, are at a mass ratio of at least 8 to 1, and for inner
planets they go into independent orbits while for outer planets one of the portions exits the Solar System. The
inner protoplanets were Venus-Mercury and Earth-Mars. The moons of the greater planets were formed from
"droplets" in the neck connecting the 2 portions of the dividing protoplanet and these droplets could account for
some of the asteroids. Terrestrial planets would have no major moons which does not account for Luna. It
predicts certain observations such as the similar angular velocity of Mars and Earth with similar rotation periods
and axial tilts. In this scheme there are 6 principal planets: 2 terrestrial, Venus and Earth, 2 major, Jupiter and
Saturn, and 2 outer, Uranus and Neptune; and 3 lesser planets: Mercury, Mars, and Pluto.
This theory has a number of problems, such as explaining the fact that the planets all orbit the Sun in the same
direction, which would appear highly unlikely if they were each individually captured.
Cameron's hypothesis
In American astronomer Alastair G. W. Cameron's hypothesis (from 1962 and 1963), the protosun has a mass
of about 1-2 Suns with a diameter of around 100,000 AU is gravitationally unstable, collapses, and breaks up
into smaller subunits. The magnetic field is of the order of 1/100,000 gauss. During the collapse the magnetic
lines of force are twisted. The collapse is fast and is done by the dissociation of H molecules followed by the
ionization of H and the double ionization of He. Angular momentum leads to rotational instability which produces
a Laplacean disk. At this stage radiation will remove excess energy and the disk will be quite cool in a relatively
short period (about 1 mln. yrs.) and the condensation into what Whipple calls cometismals takes place.
Aggregation of these produces giant planets which in turn produce disks during their formation from which evolve
into lunar systems. The formation of terrestrial planets, comets, and asteroids involved disintegration, heating,
melting, solidification, etc. He also formulated the Big Splat or Giant Impactor Hypothesis for the origin of the
Moon.
Capture theory
The capture theory, proposed by M. M. Woolfson in 1964, posits that the Solar System formed
from tidal interactions between the Sun and a low-density protostar. The Sun's gravity would have drawn
material from the diffuse atmosphere of the protostar, which would then have collapsed to form the
planets. However, the capture theory predicts a different age for the Sun than for the planets, whereas the similar
ages of the Sun and the rest of the Solar System indicate that they formed at roughly the same time.
As captured planets would have initially eccentric orbits Dormand and Woolfson in 1974 and 1977 and
Woolfson proposed the possibility of a collision. A filament is thrown out by a passing proto-star which is captured
by the Sun and planets form from it. In this there were 6 original planets, corresponding to 6 point-masses in the
filament, with planets A and B, the 2 innermost, colliding, the former at twice the mass of Neptune, and ejecting
out of the Solar System, and the latter at 1/3 the mass of Uranus, and splitting into Earth and Venus. Mars and
the Moon are former moons of A. Mercury is either a fragment of B or an escaped moon of A. The collision also
produced the asteroid belt and the comets.
T.J.J. See was an American astronomer and Navy Captain who at one time worked under Ellery Hale at the
Lowell Observatory. He had a cult following largely because of his many (some 60) articles in Popular
Astronomy but also in Astronomische Nachrichte (Astronomical News) (mostly in English). While at the USNO's
Mare Island, Cal. station, he developed a model which he called capture theory, published in 1910, in his
"Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar Systems: v. 2. The capture theory of cosmical evolution, founded on
dynamical principles and illustrated by phenomena observed in the spiral nebulae, the planetary system, the
double and multiple stars and clusters and the star-clouds of the Milky Way", which proposed that the planets
formed in the outer Solar System and were captured by the Sun; the moons were formed in thus manner and
were captured by the planets. This caused a feud with Forest Moulton, who co-developed the planetesimal
hypothesis. A preview was presented in 1909 at a meeting of the ASP (Astronomical Society of the Pacific) at
the Chabot Observatory in Oakland, Cal., and newspaper headlines blared "Prof. See's Paper Causes
Sensation" (San Francisco Call) and "Scientists in Furore Over Nebulae" (San Francisco Examiner). Our current
knowledge of dynamics makes capture most unlikely as it requires special conditions.
Solar fission
Swiss astronomer Louis Jacot (in 1951, 1962, 1981),[17] like Weisacker and Ter Haar, continued the Cartesian
idea of vortices but proposed a hierarchy of vortices or vortices within vortices, i.e., a lunar system vortex, a
Solar System vortex, and a galactic vortex. He put forward the notion that planetary orbits were in spirals, not
circles or ellipses so recognized that the Solar System is in expansion (planets move away from the Sun). It is a
known fact that planetary orbits are not fixed circles but are slowly spiraling outwards, Earth's anomalistic year
(a planetary orbit measured from perihelion to perihelion) being 4 min., 44 sec. longer than the sidereal year (a
planetary orbit measured relative to the background stars), however, the accepted explanation is the gravitational
displacement on any particular, given planet by the other planets, not a vortex. Besides the expansion of the
Solar System, Jacot also proposed the expansion of galaxies (stars move away from the hub), and that moons
move away from their planets.
He also maintained that planets were expelled, one at a time, from the Sun, specifically from an equatorial bulge
caused by rotation, and that one of them shattered in this expulsion leaving the asteroid belt. The Kuiper Belt
was unknown at the time, but presumably it, too, would be the result of the same kind of shattering. The moons,
like the planets, originated as equatorial expulsions, but, of course, from their parent planets, with some
shattering, leaving the rings, and Earth is supposed to eventually expel another moon.
In this model there were 4 phases to the planets: no rotation and keeping the same side to the Sun "as Mercury
does now" (we've known, of course, since 1965, that it doesn't), very slow, accelerated, and finally, daily rotation.
He explained the differences between inner and outer planets and inner and outer moons through vortex
behaviour. Mercury's eccentric orbit was explained by its recent expulsion from the Sun and Venus' slow rotation
as its being in the slow rotation phase, having been expelled second to last.
Jacot was at least partly right concerning vortices. George Vatistas, a researcher and professor of mechanical
engineering at Concordia in Montreal, was the first to discover geometrical shapes in the centers of vortices in
the lab, and some galaxies have similar central shapes, squares or triangles. Spiral galaxies are, in fact, vortices.
Other geometrical shapes have been found in vortices in nature: a hexagon at the South Pole of Saturn's
atmosphere observed by Cassini and a pentagon in Hurricane Isabel seen in 2003.
The Tom Van Flandern model was first proposed in 1993 in the first edition of his book. In the revised version
from 1999 and later, the original Solar System had 6 pairs of twin planets each fissioned off from the equatorial
bulges of an overspinning Sun (outward centrifugal forces exceed the inward gravitational force) at different
times so having different temperatures, sizes, and compositions, and having condensed thereafter with the
nebular disk dissipating after some 100 million years, with 6 planets exploding. Four of these were helium
dominated, fluid, and unstable (helium class planets). These were V (Bellatrix) (V standing for the 5th planet, the
first 4 including Mercury and Mars), K (Krypton), T (transneptunian), and Planet X. In these cases, the smaller
moons exploded because of tidal stresses leaving the 4 component belts of the 2 major planetoid zones. Planet
LHB-A, the explosion for which is postulated to have caused the Late Heavy Bombardment (about 4 eons ago),
was twinned with Jupiter, and LHB-B, the explosion for which is postulated to have caused another LHB, was
twinned with Saturn. In planets LHB-A, Jupiter, LHB-B, and Saturn, being gigantic, Jovian planets, the inner and
smaller partner in each pair was subjected to enormous tidal stresses causing it to blow up. The explosions took
place before they were able to fission off moons. As the 6 were fluid they left no trace. Solid planets fission off
only one moon and Mercury was a moon of Venus but drifted away because of the Sun's gravitational influence.
Mars was a moon of Bellatrix.
One major argument against exploding planets and moons is that there would not be an energy source powerful
enough to cause such explosions, but Van Flandern provides 3 possible mechanisms: change of state, natural
nuclear reactor, and gravitational heat energy. The first 2 he considers as being powerful enough only for smaller
planets, but the third relies on LaSage gravity which has fallen out of favour (see Le Sage's theory of gravitation).
The other major argument is that there isn’t enough mass in the Main Belt to account for the calamity, but, in this
type of explosion, most of the mass would be vapourized. Van Flandern presents over 100 points of evidence in
11 lines of evidence for such explosions. The EPH (exploded planet hypothesis) has been supported also
by Olbers (who originated it in 1812), Lagrange in 1814, Reginald Daly in 1944, Brown and Patterson in 1948
(Van Flandern, 1999, loc. cit.), Sergei Orloff (who gave the name of Phaeton to the missing planet), Ovenden in
1972 and 1973 (Van Flandern, 1999, loc. cit.), Opik in 1978 (Van Flandern, 1999, loc. cit.).
It is the only model that explains the twinning of planets (and moons), but also explains coplanar and circular
orbits, angular momentum distribution, the asteroid belts, the small size and orbital anomalies of Mars and
Mercury, and the late heavy bombardments.
Fission is also proposed as a possible explanation for the formation of close binary stars and explosions for the
formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters
Herndon's model
In J. Marvin Herndon's model, inner (large-core) planets form by condensation and raining-out from within giant
gaseous protoplanets at high pressures and high temperatures. Earth's complete condensation included a c.
300 Earth-mass gas/ice shell that compressed the rocky kernel to about 66% of Earth's present diameter (Jupiter
equates to about 300 Earth masses, which equals c. 2000 trillion trillion kg; Earth is at about 6 trillion trillion kg).
T Tauri (see T Tauri type stars) eruptions of the Sun stripped the gases away from the inner planets. Mercury
was incompletely condensed and a portion of its gases were stripped away and transported to the region
between Mars and Jupiter, where it fused with in-falling oxidized condensate from the outer reaches of the Solar
System and formed the parent material for ordinary chondrite meteorites, the Main-Belt asteroids, and veneer
for the inner planets, especially Mars. The differences between the inner planets are primarily the consequence
of different degrees of protoplanetary compression. There are two types of responses to decompression-driven
planetary volume increases: cracks, which form to increase surface area, and folding, creating mountain ranges,
to accommodate changes in curvature.
This planetary formation theory represents an extension of the Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics (WEDD)
model, which includes natural nuclear-fission reactors in planetary cores; Herndon elaborates, expounds, and
elucidates it in 11 articles in Current Science from 2005 to 2013 and in five books published from 2008 to 2012.
He refers to his model as "indivisible" - meaning that the fundamental aspects of Earth are connected logically
and causally, and can be deduced from its early formation as a Jupiter-like giant.
In 1944 the German chemist and physicist Arnold Eucken considered the thermodynamics of Earth condensing
and raining-out within a giant protoplanet at pressures of 100–1000 atm. In the 1950s and early 1960s discussion
of planetary formation at such pressures took place, but Cameron's 1963 low-pressure (c. 4–10 atm.) model
largely supplanted the idea.
Classification of the theories
Jeans, in 1931, divided the various models into 2 groups: those where the material for planet formation came
from the Sun and those where it didn't and may be concurrent or consecutive.
William McCrea, in 1963, divided them into 2 groups also: those that relate the formation of the planets to the
formation of the Sun and those where it is independent of the formation of the Sun, where the planets form after
the Sun becomes a normal star.
Ter Haar and Cameron distinguished between those theories that consider a closed system, which is a
development of the Sun and possibly a solar envelope, that starts with a protosun rather than the Sun itself, and
state that Belot calls these theories monistic; and those that consider an open system, which is where there is
an interaction between the Sun and some foreign body that is supposed to have been the first step in the
developments leading to the planetary system, and state that Belot calls these theories dualistic.
Hervé Reeves' classification also categorizes them as co-genetic with the Sun or not but also as formed from
altered or unaltered stellar/interstellar material. He as well recognizes 4 groups: 1) models based on the solar
nebula, originated by Swedenborg, Kant, and Laplace in the 1700s; 2) the ones proposing a cloud captured from
interstellar space, major proponents being Alfvén and Gustaf Arrhenius (in 1978) and Alfvén and Arrhenius; 3)
the binary hypotheses which propose that a sister star somehow disintegrated and a portion of its dissipating
material was captured by the Sun, principal hypothesizer being Lyttleton in the '40s; 4) and the close-approach-
filament ideas of Jeans, Jeffreys, and Woolfson and Dormand.
In Williams and Cremin the categories are: (1) models that regard the origin and formation of the planets as
being essentially related to the Sun, with the 2 formation processes taking place concurrently or consecutively,
(2) models that regard formation of the planets as being independent of the formation process of the Sun, the
planets forming after the Sun becomes a normal star; this has 2 subcategories: a) where the material for the
formation of the planets is extracted either from the Sun or another star, b) where the material is acquired from
interstellar space. They conclude that the best models are Hoyle's magnetic coupling and McCrea's floccules.
Woolfson recognized 1) monistic, which included Laplace, Descartes, Kant, and Weisacker, and 2) dualistc,
which included Leclerc (comte de Buffon), Chamberlin-Moulton, Jeans, Jeffreys, and Schmidt-Lyttleton.
Origin of Life on Earth
The origin of life is a scientific problem which is not yet solved. There are plenty of ideas, but few clear facts.
It is generally agreed that all life today evolved by common descent from a single primitive lifeform. We do not
know how this early form came about, but scientists think it was a natural process which took place perhaps
3,900 million years ago. This is in accord with a philosophy called naturalism: only natural causes are admitted.
We do not know whether metabolism or genetics came first. The main hypothesis which supports genetics first
is RNA world hypothesis, and the one which supports metabolism first is Protein world hypothesis.
Another big problem is how cells develop. All existing forms of life are built out of cells.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Melvin Calvin wrote a book on the subject, and so did Alexander
Oparin. What links most of the early work on the origin of life was the idea that before biological evolution began
there must have been a process of chemical evolution.Another question which has been discussed by J.D.
Bernal and others is the origin of the cell membrane. By concentrating the chemicals in one place, the cell
membrane performs a vital function.
Many religions teach that life did not evolve spontaneously, but was deliberately created by a god. Such theories
are a part of creationism. If they claim this happened within the last few thousand years, this is much more recent
than the fossil record suggests. The lack of evidence for such views means that most scientists do not believe
them.

Fossil record

Earliest claimed life on Earth

The earliest claimed lifeforms are fossilized microorganisms (or microfossils). They were found in iron and silica-
rich rocks which were once hydrothermal vents in the Nuvvuagittuqgreenstone belt of Quebec, Canada.
These rocks are as old as 4.28 billion years. The tubular forms they contain are shown in a report. If this is the
oldest record of life on Earth, it suggests "an almost instantaneous emergence of life" after oceans formed 4.4
billion years ago. According to Stephen Blair Hedges, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth… then it could be
common in the universe".
Previous earliest
A scientific study from 2002 showed that geological formations of stromatolites 3.45 billion years old
contain fossilized cyanobacteria. At the time it was widely agreed that stromatolites were oldest known lifeform
on Earth which had left a record of its existence. Therefore, if life originated on Earth, this happened sometime
between 4.4 billion years ago, when water vapor first liquefied, and 3.5 billion years ago. This is the background
to the latest discovery discussed above.
Earliest evidence of life comes from the Isua supercrustal belt in Western Greenland and from similar formations
in the nearby Akilia Islands. This is because a high level of the lighter isotope of carbon is found there. Living
things uptake lighter isotopes because this takes less energy. Carbon entering into rock formations has a
concentration of elemental δ13C of about −5.5. of 12C, biomass has a δ13C of between −20 and −30. These
isotopic fingerprints are preserved in the rocks. With this evidence, Mojzis suggested that life existed on the
planet already by 3.85 billion years ago.
A few scientists think life might have been carried from planet to planet by the transport of spores. This idea,
now known as panspermia, was first put forward by Arrhenius.

History of studies into the origin of life

Spontaneous generation
Until the early 19th century many people believed in the regular spontaneous generation of life from non-living
matter. This was called spontaneous generation, and was disproved by Louis Pasteur. He showed that without
spores no bacteria or viruses grew on sterile material.
Darwin
In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker on 11 February 1871, Charles Darwin proposed a natural process for the
origin of life.
He suggested that the original spark of life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts
of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. A protein compound was then chemically formed
ready to undergo still more complex changes". He went on to explain that "at the present day such matter would
be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed".
Haldane and Oparin
No real progress was made until 1924 when Alexander Oparin reasoned that atmospheric oxygen prevented the
synthesis of the organic molecules. Organic molecules are the necessary building blocks for the evolution of life.
In his The Origin of Life, Oparin argued that a "primeval soup" of organic molecules could be created in an
oxygen-less atmosphere through the action of sunlight. These would combine in ever-more complex fashions
until they formed droplets. These droplets would "grow" by fusion with other droplets, and "reproduce" through
fission into daughter droplets, and so have a primitive metabolism in which those factors which promote "cell
integrity" survive, those that do not become extinct. Many modern theories of the origin of life still take Oparin's
ideas as a starting point.
Around the same time J.B.S. Haldane also suggested that the Earth's pre-biotic oceans, which were very
different from what oceans are now, would have formed a "hot dilute soup". In this soup, organic compounds,
the building blocks of life, could have formed. This idea was called biopoiesis, the process of living matter
evolving from self-replicating but nonliving molecules.

Miller Urey Experiment

The Miller–Urey experiment (or Miller experiment) was a chemical experiment that simulated the conditions
thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and tested the chemical origin of life under those conditions.
The experiment supported Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that putative conditions on the
primitive Earth favoured chemical reactions that synthesized more complex organic compounds from simpler
inorganic precursors. Considered to be the classic experiment investigating abiogenesis, it was conducted in
1952[3] by Stanley Miller, with assistance from Harold Urey, at the University of Chicago and later the University
of California, San Diegoand published the following year.
After Miller's death in 2007, scientists examining sealed vials preserved from the original experiments were able
to show that there were actually well over 20 different amino acids produced in Miller's original experiments. That
is considerably more than what Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that naturally occur in life. More-
recent evidence suggests that Earth's original atmosphere might have had a different composition from the gas
used in the Miller experiment. But prebiotic experiments continue to produce racemic mixtures of simple to
complex compounds under varying conditions.

Experiment
The experiment used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and hydrogen (H2). The chemicals were all
sealed inside a sterile 5-liter glass flask connected to a 500 ml flask half-full of liquid water. The liquid water in
the smaller flask was heated to induce evaporation, and the water vapour was allowed to enter the larger flask.
Continuous electrical sparks were fired between the electrodes to simulate lightning in the water vapour and
gaseous mixture, and then the simulated atmosphere was cooled again so that the water condensed and trickled
into a U-shaped trap at the bottom of the apparatus.
After a day, the solution collected at the trap had turned pink in colour At the end of one week of continuous
operation, the boiling flask was removed, and mercuric chloride was added to prevent microbial contamination.
The reaction was stopped by adding barium hydroxide and sulfuric acid, and evaporated to remove impurities.
Using paper chromatography, Miller identified five amino acids present in the solution: glycine, α-alanine and β-
alanine were positively identified, while aspartic acid and α-aminobutyric acid (AABA) were less certain, due to
the spots being faint.
In a 1996 interview, Stanley Miller recollected his lifelong experiments following his original work and stated:
"Just turning on the spark in a basic pre-biotic experiment will yield 11 out of 20 amino acids."
As observed in all subsequent experiments, both left-handed (L) and right-handed (D) optical isomers were
created in a racemic mixture. In biological systems, almost all of the compounds are non-racemic, or homochiral.
The original experiment remains today under the care of Miller and Urey's former student Jeffrey Bada, a
professor at the UCSD, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The apparatus used to conduct the experiment is
on display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science