Word: ancients
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Students of ancient life believe that billions of years ago the newly formed earth was covered by an atmosphere that had no free oxygen in it. Instead it had methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and other gases that cannot be breathed by modern animals. Lightning flashes, so the theory goes, forced these gases to form complicated chemicals that dissolved in sea water. There the chemicals reacted with each other and the water, forming bigger and bigger molecules. After millions or billions of years of this process, a single molecule-perhaps a nucleic acid-was formed that had the ability to grow...
This was the start of life, and chemists have often tried to copy the process themselves. They have mixed the proper gases in a laboratory flask, put water in the bottom to simulate the ocean, and shot electric sparks into it to do the work of the ancient lightning. When they analyzed the water, they found many an interesting chemical, some of them characteristic of living organisms, but they did not find nucleic acid, the essential substance at the heart of life...
...Schramm started his synthesis with chemicals that were probably dissolved in the ancient ocean before life appeared. Some of them were simple sugars, amino acids or nucleotides (small molecules contained in nucleic acids). Perhaps the most important were phosphorus compounds called polyphosphate esters. Dr. Schramm believes that all of them could have been formed by natural, nonliving reactions on the lifeless earth...
Carefully avoiding life-made catalysts such as enzymes, he treated his chemical broth to moderate heat, pressure and other influences that were probably felt in the ancient ocean. Then he analyzed the product and found that it contained a simple nucleic acid. It met all chemical tests, and when its giant molecules were examined under a powerful electron microscope they showed evidence of the twisted, ropelike structure that is characteristic of natural nucleic acids...
...here in New York we are celebrating the essential unity of all man's religions," Unitarian Minister Donald Harrington told his congregation at Manhattan's Community Church last week. As Harrington completed his sermon, a prayer gong sounded, and a red-robed priest began to chant the ancient Shishinrai...