Origins of Life Vocabulary

Francesco Redi

He said that maggots come from flies and not from the meat.

Louis Pasteur

His experiment put an need to spontaneous generation. He had a curved flask and trapped dusk and microorganisms and the broth never got contaminated.

Lazzaro Spallanzani

Microorganisms that come from the air grew inside of his broth after boiling it.

Oparin and Haldane

These are two Russian scientists who proposed the idea that life could have began inside of the ocean.

Abiogenesis

This is a process where a living organism naturally forms from non-living matter. This is not biogenesis which is the creation of organisms by other living organisms.

Prebiotic

This is a word that means before life and it is used often to describe the earth before life started.

Biogenesis

This is the creation of living organisms from other living organism. (Baby's are an example of this)

spontaneous generation

This is the hypothetical process when the living organisms develop form non living matters. (Like flies being created because of rotten meat)

Primordial soup

This is the idea that life began in a pond or in an ocean due to the chemical combination from the atmosphere and some kind of energy which formed amino acids.

Meteorite hypothesis

This is the idea that suggest that organic molecules could have arrived on earth through a meteorite / asteroid impact.