Science: Steps Toward Life

Nearly everyone wants to know how life on earth began, says Biochemist Sidney W. Fox of Florida State University, but most scientists who conjecture about it merely theorize. They do not test their ideas by actual experiments. Dr. Fox and a few others have been experimenting, and in Science Dr. Fox tells what luck they have had so far in charting the secret paths followed by nature in the creation of life.

Gases to Protein. Astronomers believe that the atmosphere of the early, lifeless earth had no free oxygen in it, but was made of...

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