One of the great mysteries of life is how it began. What
physical process transformed a nonliving mix of chemicals into something as
complex as a living cell?
For more than a century, scientists have struggled to
reconstruct the key first steps on the road to life. Until recently, their
focus has been trained on how the simple building blocks of life might have
been synthesized on the early Earth, or perhaps in space. But because it
happened so long ago, all chemical traces have long been obliterated, leaving
plenty of scope for speculation and disagreement.