WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

The question of how life came to be has captivated humans for millennia. The prevailing theory now is that on a highly volatile early earth lightning struck mineral rich waters. And that the energy from lighting strikes turned those minerals into the building blocks of life: organic compounds like amino acids. Something we often refer to as the "primordial soup."

The wide acceptance of this theory is in large part due to the very famous Miller-Urey experiment. You surely encountered this in a science textbook at some point--but to refresh your memory: in 1952 Stanley Miller and Harold Urey simulated the conditions of early earth by sealing water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a glass flask. Then they applied electrical sparks to the mixture. Miraculously, amino acids came into existence amid the roiling mixture. It was a big deal.

But recently a team of researchers realized that--much like that first primordial soup sitting in a bowl of Earth--the experiment's container played an underappreciated role. That perhaps it was also critical to the creation of organic building blocks inside their laboratory life soup.

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