IN 1953, StANLEY Miller, a graduate student at ty of Cook taining a little er to represent a primeval ocean, ture of meto represent Eartmosped tubes, and introduced some electrical sparks as astand-in for liger a feer in turned green and yelloty acids, sugars, and ot do it ted supervisor, te .”

    Press reports of time made it sound as if about all t o give t. As time  nearly so simple. Despite ury of furtudy, osyntoday thinking we can.

    Scientists are noty certain t tmosp as Miller and Urey’s gaseous ste rative blend ofnitrogen and carbon dioxide. Repeating Miller’s experiments s ive amino acid. At all events, creating aminoacids is not really teins.

    Proteins are  oget of them.

    No one really kno types of protein in ttle miracle. By all ty proteins s exist.

    to make a protein you need to assemble amino acids (ion torefer to icular order, in mucyou assemble letters in a particular order to spell a   are often exceedingly long. to spell collagen, type of protein, you need to arrange eigters in t order. But to make collagen, youneed to arrange 1,055 amino acids in precisely t sequence. But—and  crucial point—you don’t make it. It makes itself, spontaneously, direction, and the unlikelihoods come in.

    taneously self-assembling are,frankly, nil. It just isn’t going to o grasp s existence is, visualize astandard Las Vegas slot mac broadened greatly—to about ninety feet, to be precise—to accommodate 1,055 spinning ysymbols on each wheel (one f