New research shows that fluctuating environmental conditions helped chemical mixtures self-organize and evolve in structured ways, challenging the notion of chaotic early chemical evolution.
A new study examines how complex chemical mixtures evolve under changing environmental conditions, offering insights into the prebiotic processes that may have led to life. Researchers exposed organic molecules to repeated wet-dry cycles and observed continuous transformations, selective organization, and synchronized population dynamics.
The findings indicate that environmental conditions played a crucial role in fostering the molecular complexity necessary for life’s emergence. By simulating early Earth’s conditions, the team found that instead of reacting randomly, molecules self-organized, evolved over time, and followed predictable patterns.
This challenges the notion that early chemical evolution was purely chaotic. Instead, the study suggests that natural environmental fluctuations guided the formation of increasingly complex molecules, ultimately contributing to the development of life’s fundamental building blocks.
A New Experimental Approach to Chemical Evolution
A new study led by Dr. Moran Frenkel-Pinter, from the Institute of Chemistry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as Prof. Loren Williams, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, investigates how chemical mixtures evolve over time, shedding light on potential mechanisms that contributed to the emergence of life on Earth.
Published in Nature Chemistry, the research examines how chemical systems can undergo continuous transformation while maintaining structured evolution, offering new insights into the origins of biological complexity.
Chemical evolution refers to the gradual transformation of molecules in prebiotic conditions, a key process in understanding how life may have arisen from non-living matter. While much research has focused on individual chemical reactions that could lead to biological molecules, this study establishes an experimental model to explore how entire chemical systems evolve when exposed to environmental changes.
How Molecules Evolve Under Wet-Dry Cycles
The researchers used mixtures containing organic molecules with diverse functional groups, including carboxylic acids, amines, thiols, and hydroxyls. By subjecting these mixtures to repeated wet-dry cycles—conditions that mimic the environmental fluctuations of early Earth—the study identified three key findings:
- Chemical systems can continuously evolve without reaching equilibrium.
- Selective chemical pathways prevent uncontrolled complexity.
- Different molecular species exhibit synchronized population dynamics.
These observations suggest that prebiotic environments may have played an active role in shaping the molecular diversity that eventually led to life.
“This research offers a new perspective on how molecular evolution might have unfolded on early Earth,” said Dr. Frenkel-Pinter. “By demonstrating that chemical systems can self-organize and evolve in structured ways, we provide experimental evidence that may help bridge the gap between prebiotic chemistry and the emergence of biological molecules.”
Beyond its relevance to origins-of-life research, the study’s findings may have broader applications in synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Controlled chemical evolution could be harnessed to design new molecular systems with specific properties, potentially leading to innovations in materials science, drug development, and biotechnology.
Reference: “Evolution of complex chemical mixtures reveals combinatorial compression and population synchronicity” by Kavita Matange, Vahab Rajaei, Pau Capera-Aragones, John T. Costner, Adelaide Robertson, Jennifer Seoyoung Kim, Anton S. Petrov, Jessica C. Bowman, Loren Dean Williams and Moran Frenkel-Pinter, 12 February 2025, Nature Chemistry.
DOI: 10.1038/s41557-025-01734-x
Funding: National Science Foundation, NASA Center for Integration of the Origins of Life, Azrieli Foundation Early Career Faculty Grant, Israel Science Foundation, Minerva Foundation, FEBS Foundation Excellence Award
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30 Comments
Good luck
Genesis 1:3-5 NIV
[3] And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. [4] God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. [5] God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
Ancient mythology
Creationism isn’t Science it’s superstitious magic belief.
AMEN!
Word salad
2 deferent light to the earth day &night the light of the day from sun the earth or globe is square the lower side of the east is start brightness to the sun the day is 12 hours the beginning light start to the east the earth around the sun of 12 hours the is going the half end of the earth from the west the the moon start to going brightness to the east side of the earth thin the stars is together to the moon to make wonderful fantastic pretty great and beautiful brightness in 12 hours the sim of sun in morning time you can see the beautiful great wonderful fantastic pretty light from the sun coz you see the trees birds grass people living things in non living things is very very happy to the brightness to the beautiful creatures all around the world the light is guidance me in you to the right direction to your life the God said all things wise is beautiful all criture great in small all things wise in wonderful the lord God them all…AMEN
Creationism is a debunked myth.
Just the opposite! Homochirality alone shows creation.
There’s nothing wrong with bringing God into the debate, God is a symbol of Creation of Life. However my view is God lets Earth’s chemistry get on with it.
I want to know everything all around the world to make great fantastic wonderful pretty and beautiful life to all people around the world make everyone everything to happy life .-+×÷=9876543210 below the land water non living things in living things air oxygen gravity clouds sun moon star around the 9 planet going up to the sky to observe study to make beautiful great wonderful fantastic pretty everything all over the world to make everything it’s possible to doing good in great the universe mabuhay tayong lahat….GOD BLESS TO ALL PEOPLE AMEM….
In the real world, molecules are not kept confined in one place, where changes can accumulate. Instead, wind and water will dilute and disperse molecules, and sunlight will irradiate them with ultraviolet radiation that breaks molecules into their component parts. The kind of “chemical evolution” described is only possible if a scientist present on the early earth is conducting this kind of experiment. The researchers have presented an argument for intelligent intervention in the origin of life by an existing actor. The process they described could not occur raw nature.
Show your scientific work that supports your belief. Oh, you can’t can you?
Knowledge is different from a belief. But knowledge is hard work.. Not an easy way out.
Faith isn’t easy either
When I see too many religious people’s comments on a science news site, I too feel faith isn’t easy.
Interesting info … but anyone who thinks that this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_tYrnv_o6A&t=45s poofed into existence without a design and a designer is going in with the answer they want and hoping to find evidence for it (spoiler alert, this article doesn’t provide it nor will it ever be provided by anyone doing objective research). Interesting article, but anyone who thinks life started without a designer is not being honest.
There’s nothing in the article’s description of prebiotic conditions contradicting the thesis of a fundamentally random scenario for the chemical evolution of life, only that over time and geography multiple environments of wet, dry, humid, arid, windy, rainy, cold, hot, stagnant, dispersive, etc. etc. challenged the chemical species precursor to fully self-replicating organisms.
In fact, the whole thing sounds even more random than Darwin’s singular, unchanging, warm puddle.
The fundamental problem for the origin of life is explaining how the amino acid “building blocks” could get together to form peptide bonds that would lead to proteins and primitive cells in the presence of the Sun’s DNA damaging solar radiation. The fact that there is evidence of life in the oldest rocks on Earth implies the presence of an oxygen-ozone atmosphere that is at odds with the anoxic atmosphere dogma.
Questions PHD Evolutionists can’t answer. There will be all kinds of comments and some swaering …but not one answer…let’s see if im right
Just ask any evolutionist to give every countable step to get
a CELL,
a BRAIN
or BODY
by mutations and prove they are all mistakes
Ok ½ all the steps
Ok ⅛
1/16?
1/32?
1/64?
1/128th ?
1/256?
1/500?
1/1000?
NOT ONE OF THEM CAN GIVE EVERY STEP…NOR 1 IN 1000 OF THE STEPS…NOT EVEN PHDS
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/pssst-dont-tell-the-creationists-but-scientists-dont-have-a-clue-how-life-began/
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If there’s 1500 living animal kinds and we have starts and finishes but no transitions that’s 3 possibilities. So ⅓ ^ 1500 is going to be astronomically slim that all the living transitional creatures are missing with significant gaps.
The brain has thousand trillion connections … to compute how many possible arrangements…on calculator enter “1000,000,000,000,000!”In the Google search .. it won’t answer
At most the calculator will only go up to about 170! That has 7 x 10^ 306 possible arrangements. Written out that’s a number with 306 zeros. There’s only 90 zeros if you count every atomic particle in the universe.
Maybe, No calculator can compute all the wrong ways a thousand trillion could happen? A mutation might be capable of changing a color etc. , but the probabilities would prohibit it from wiring the brain or nervous system.
The body has 7500 parts. To compute the permutations can’t be computed on Google calculator because the number is so large.
In 4 billion years if your in the Old age camp or relativity of time camp…there’s only been around 10^40 mutations that would ever happen and pass on.
20 amino acids ^31=10^40
At most you’d have a specific protein of 31 amino acids …BUT…in all the species we have that can’t inner breed…these amino acids would never even come together to Make a new protein in 4 billion years
Also with 10 to 41 tries …you could only arrange 36 parts in a specific order. 36x35x34…x1
or type 36! Then hit Enter on Google search box
Everyone knows that the human body or Even a cell has more than 36 parts. There are billions of species … Often with trillions of things that are arranged in specific order. Darwinism is uncapable… It could even be called an informational Eunich.
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Create bara and made asah in Hebrew do allow for transformation
Create is new circumstances and action of God
Half the definitions for made asah are clearly something already existing
IF God did transform…. it DOESNT appear to have happened by chance. He did make Eve from Adam.. so it’s possible by Hebrew grammar.
Bible does not actually say Adam is the 1st man except for a passage in a New Testament that says Jesus is the 2nd man… Clearly it did not mean the 1st of 2nd man in the history
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The Hebrew of Genesis ( beginnings) one matches the scientific order of events. reproductive seed …greenish….vegetation….lights put in place and seen ….sea reptiles and flyers flying insects…. Transition to land…. Land animals…man…an actual 14 to 24 items and in 10 to 10000000000000 to 1 in 10^26
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Time is relative and it runs at different rates all over the universe but looking in a telescope a local supernova last 20 days but if the space is stretched double it takes 40 day . Running the math for the stretching of the universe means that time was point 9 trillion times faster in the early universe or you could say it’s point 9 trillion times slower now. There’s a curve that represents the stretching of time and there’s an infinite number of points along that curve. So it would make the most sense that God would use our rate of time passage now which would be 6 days but if you were in the early universe it would work to be 13.8 billion years. There’s a website that explains this at SIX day science. Time is relative it can’t be ignored at universal scales.
There’s an Atlantic article call has physics made religion and philosophy obsolete if you rread closely Lawrence Krauss admits that science has never shown that something can come from nothing and that his nothing is full of stuff and it’s not actually nothing and that science cannot answer an infinite regression. Lawrence Krauss even admits that he named his book a universe from nothing so that it would sell… And that if he had called it a marvelous universe no one would have bought it. He also says imagine there’s a formula but imagine means he doesn’t have it
But infinite regressions are impossible If you have an infinite chain of falling domino’s the contradiction is domino’s don’t fall unless something starts them falling so there has to be a beginning. Another way to see it is that an infinite chain of cause and effects has no reason for itself and is always searching in the past for a reason to exist and never finding it so it’s a contradiction.
Yaaaaawn. Krause was talking about quantum fluctuations that exist in a vacuum and a proposal that a universe like ours could have a net energy of zero. Hence a universe from nothing. Jury is out yet on whether it’s valid.
“Evolutionists can’t give all the steps to get a cell, brain, or body by mutations, so it’s not real.”
Scientific Response:
No one claims to have a complete list of every single mutation that occurred across billions of years — that’s a strawman. Evolution works through cumulative, testable processes: mutation, selection, drift, and gene flow. We observe and predict how mutations impact organisms today. Demanding a step-by-step account for every mutation is like saying you don’t believe in Mount Everest unless you can list the exact molecular shifts that formed every layer of rock.
Common Sense:
Do you demand a frame-by-frame account of how a baby grows from a zygote into an adult before you’ll believe human development happens? No. You accept it because it’s observable, consistent, and explainable in general terms — even if you don’t track every single cell division.
“Scientists can’t explain the origin of life, so evolution fails.”
Scientific Response:
Abiogenesis (origin of life) ≠ evolution (change in life over time). Evolution starts after life begins. Yes, the origin of life is still a complex question — but complexity doesn’t imply design. In fact, ongoing research shows many promising pathways: lipid vesicles, self-replicating RNA, and metabolism-first theories are all under active investigation.
Common Sense:
You don’t throw out the entire field of meteorology just because you can’t predict the exact moment lightning will strike your mailbox.
“1,500 animal kinds exist with no transitions between them.”
Scientific Response:
Fossil transitions exist in droves: fish-to-tetrapods (Tiktaalik), reptiles-to-birds (Archaeopteryx), land mammals-to-whales (Pakicetus → Ambulocetus → Basilosaurus). The term “kind” is not a biological category — it’s an invention used by creationists to lump together animals arbitrarily.
Common Sense:
If you see Polaroids of a person aging from childhood to old age but don’t have every hour captured, do you assume they teleported from 10 to 80?
“The brain has too many connections to evolve by chance.”
Scientific Response:
Evolution is not random. Mutations are random; selection is not. Brains didn’t pop into existence fully formed — they evolved gradually. Even simple organisms like flatworms have nerve clusters. Over time, more complexity gets added if it’s beneficial.
Common Sense:
A sandcastle looks complex — but it forms from countless tiny steps. You don’t need to guess every grain’s location to understand it was built gradually.
“The body has 7,500 parts, and the math doesn’t work to evolve that.”
Scientific Response:
Permutations are irrelevant because evolution doesn’t randomly assemble a body like mixing puzzle pieces blindly. It builds incrementally through feedback from survival. The number of useless combinations is not evidence against evolution; it’s evidence of why evolution filters those that work.
Common Sense:
Imagine typing a sentence one letter at a time. Random typing won’t get you there fast — but selecting correct letters as you go gets results fast. That’s how natural selection works.
“In 4 billion years, only 10^40 mutations could happen, and that’s not enough.”
Scientific Response:
This is based on flawed math and misunderstandings of protein evolution. Proteins don’t have to be built from scratch each time. Life reuses and modifies proteins. Many proteins are robust to changes. Also, most functional proteins are short (even 30–40 amino acids), and they can evolve incrementally.
Common Sense:
You don’t need to reinvent the entire car each time — just improve the engine, then the tires, etc. Life works the same way.
“Hebrew grammar allows for God to ‘transform’ instead of create, so evolution is compatible with Genesis.”
Scientific Response:
This is a religious argument, not a scientific one. Whether or not Hebrew words could imply transformation doesn’t change the evidence for evolution or the age of the Earth.
Common Sense:
You don’t settle a physics debate by quoting poetry — the Bible may be meaningful, but it’s not a peer-reviewed science journal.
“The order of Genesis matches science.”
Scientific Response:
It doesn’t. Genesis says:
Earth before stars
Light before Sun
Plants before Sun
Birds before land animals
Science says:
Stars formed before Earth
Sun came before light on Earth
Land animals evolved before birds
Plants need sunlight to exist
Common Sense:
Saying “the order is kinda close” is like saying a broken clock is accurate because it has numbers.
“Time is relative, so 6 days = 13.8 billion years.”
Scientific Response:
Yes, time is relative — in extreme gravity or speed. But this doesn’t justify squeezing the universe’s timeline into Genesis’ six-day framework. That’s pseudoscientific wordplay, not physics. General relativity doesn’t say 6 Earth days = 13.8 billion years. That’s not how cosmology works.
Common Sense:
You can’t say your pizza delivery took “5 minutes” on Jupiter time. It was still late.
“Lawrence Krauss admits his book title was for sales and didn’t prove ‘something from nothing.’”
Scientific Response:
Correct — Krauss’s “nothing” isn’t philosophical nothing, it’s quantum vacuum. Physics doesn’t yet have a full theory of origins, and Krauss was honest about that. He didn’t claim the final answer. That’s a virtue of science: it admits what it doesn’t know.
Common Sense:
If your doctor says “We’re still studying this disease,” that’s not weakness — it’s humility and honesty. Saying “God did it” and shutting down the investigation isn’t a better answer.
“Infinite regress is impossible, so there had to be a beginning and a beginner.”
Scientific Response:
Cosmology agrees — the universe likely had a beginning. But that doesn’t require a mind or deity. Quantum cosmology offers plausible models like Hartle-Hawking’s no-boundary condition. “God did it” just inserts an untestable agent and dodges the question.
Common Sense:
Saying “the universe needs a creator” leads to the same infinite regress: who created the creator? If your answer is “God always existed,” you’ve used the same logic you denied to the universe.
You throw around big numbers, religious grammar, and misapplied physics like they’re weapons — but none of it holds up to critical thinking or scientific scrutiny. They demand impossible standards from science, misrepresent it, and then claim victory when those standards aren’t met.
Science doesn’t pretend to know everything. But it has built everything from vaccines to rockets, while creationism has never made a single testable prediction.
If your argument can be summed up as “It’s too complicated, therefore God,” you’re not doing science — you’re giving up on it.
We are making sand castles by the seaside. We are speculating. We make models using our limited abilities.
Wise men accept our limitations. We can’t know the mind or minds of God. So enjoy the day and be glad in it. All is vanity, don’t despair, that’s our lot. Our person al vanity allows each to build his own house, his own place in God’s Heaven.
I have this debate in my Biology class each year. The more I hear the students bring up their (or others) points, the more I realize this debate lies outside of science (trying to understand how the physical environment around us works /operates).
Both sides will look at the same evidence and come up with a different story. It is very hard to get away from the idea of intelligent designer, as mentioned by someone else, there was much intelligence behind the conducted experiment in this article.
I think the real question we need to face, is who is this Creator? And what was it’s purpose behind creating all this? We can hide behind science and discover what it out into motion by trying to explain away its existence with lofty words and ideas, but the more we do, the more we can’t help but admit, there’s something out there way beyond us.
So the question remains, who is this intelligent being? An alien from another planet? Natural laws? A spiritual being? Have they ever visited earth? Some have claimed it, few have given miraculous proof. Does the name Jesus ring any bells? Look him up. He had some great insight into these topics.
WHO is this intelligent being? Name’s on the back of your dollar bill.
That’s with earth’s atmospheric conditions. If the moon didn’t exist everything would be chaotic. This is a theological propaganda article…
They found a way to form bacteria and they think they found out how human got here lol
I’d suggest that Theists commenting on here go read the original linked articles. It would help you understand that not knowing doesn’t equal the divine. You’re commiting very nice (and useless) god-of-the-gap fallacy.
Also, read your Bible including the context of every quote you pull out instead of making up things.
This article doesnt do a great job of explaining the concepts but to be fair its too much to cram into a single article. Read “a romance of reality”. It discusses this topic in more detail.
It’s a beautiful paradigm emerging in science. Adaptive systems form natural to facilitate energy flow in the universe which satisfies entropy. Like a whirlpool forming naturally, an organized system of molecules forms that helps energy transfer more efficiently. The more efficient arrangement sticks around while there is still an energy gradient. This simple mechanism is in all of physics. We’ve shown that Krebs cycles can form naturally, they naturally spit out the building blocks of DNA. Over time any random improvement that helps facilitate energy flow will stay. Anything that keeps the system away from thermodynamic stability works and sticks around.
The book goes into great detail for this argument. And the implications are pretty wild. I was raised catholic, am agnostic to some degree now, but this book makes a strong scientific argument for the existence of God.
Because the complexity of these systems is bound to grow. Life is bound to take over the universe and continue to grow in consciousness and complexity if this books arguments are true. Life might be the universe slowly waking up as God through all living things.
Abiogenesis started in vapor. Before the Earth, Abiogenesis had already begun. We had the eight elements, fusion and electrical phenomena. All we need now is a laboratory to “bake the cake”.