[continued from previous message]   
      
   reaction will consume sugars in pairs yielding an alcohol and a   
   carboxylic acid. Moreover, high temperatures (like are found in   
   hydrothermal vents) will cause the sugars to dehydrate and char and,   
   yes, this does happen even underwater at high pressures. The principal   
   products were intractable materials composed of melanoids, tars and   
   carbon soot around the electrodes. This was not the kind of materials   
   biologists and chemists were looking for as they are not components of   
   living organisms. Later it would be shown that the amino acids were   
   racemic, not the pure L-isomers used by living organisms. More recent   
   analyses have revealed a total of about 50 different amino acids were   
   formed, but only 20 are used by living organisms. So, while he did find   
   amino acids, they were not solely the ones living organisms use. There   
   was a lot of chaff mixed in with the wheat. While Miller was very open   
   and straightforward about these problems, they tend to get over-looked   
   in origin-of-life discussions. There is a tendency to focus on the path   
   to life ignoring all the problems: the competing reactions and   
   sidetracks along the way. This was not Miller’s fault, but it is common   
   behavior among those that argue for a solely naturalistic origin of   
   life, where it is assumed that time and “natural selection” will take   
   care of all the problems.   
      
   Has my view on whether life’s emergence was a natural, unguided process   
   shifted with time? Of course. One starts out young and naïve. I believed   
   pretty much everything I read in books and was taught in class. But as I   
   learned more, I developed a healthy skepticism and learned to think for   
   myself. Not so much in high school, but more so in college and graduate   
   school. It was all part of being a scientist: you learn to not always   
   take everything at face value. Instead, I learned to ask questions: Do   
   the conclusions fit the data? What is the evidence for this?   
      
   [Etc...]   
      
   https://scienceandculture.com/2025/08/interview-with-edward-pelt   
   er-on-the-origin-of-life/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)