OriginofLife
1. How old is the earth?
2. How old is the universe?
3. When did life appear on
earth?
4. Historically how has the
origin of life on earth been
explained?
5. What is the spontaneous
generation hypothesis?
6. How did the experiments of
Redi and Pasteur refute the
hypothesis of spontaneous
generation?
7. What is panspermia?
8. What is the autotrophic
hypothesis on the origin of
life?
9. What is the heterotrophic
hypothesis on the origin of
life?
10. What is the most accepted
hypothesis about the origin of
life on earth? How does it
compare to the other main
hypotheses?
11. Before the emergence of
life of what gases was the
earth's primitive atmosphere
constituted?
12. What are the main
constituents of the earth's
atmosphere in our time?
13. Was there molecular
oxygen in the earth's primitive
atmosphere? How has that
molecule become abundant?
14. Which physical elements
contributed to the great
amount of available energy on
the primitive earth at the time
of the origin of life?
15. What was the experiment
of Stanley Miller (1953) on the
origin of life?
16. What are coacervates?
17. How can coacervates be
formed of phospholipids or
polypeptides?
18. How could coacervates
have facilitated the
emergence of life on earth?
19. What is the evolutionary
origin of the internal
membranous organelles of the
cell?
20. How have prokaryotic cells
given origin to aerobic
eukaryotic cells and to
photosynthetic aerobic
eukaryotic cells?
21. What evidence
strengthens the hypothesis
that chloroplasts could have
been photosynthetic
prokaryotes and mitochondria
could have been aerobic
prokaryotes?
22. How did the first
fermenting autotrophs
appeared? What about the
first aerobic beings?
23. Why is it more probable
that the photosynthetic
prokaryotes appeared before
the aerobic eukaryotes?
24. What is an argument that
shows that the emergence of
photosynthetic beings was
crucial for life to reach the
marine surface and later the
dry land?