Miller–Urey experiment

A 1953 laboratory experiment in which electrical discharges through gases intended to represent early Earth produced amino acids and other organic compounds.

Stanley Miller’s spark apparatus: A closed glass system that circulated gases and water while exposing them to electrical sparks. Its boiling flask, spark chamber, condenser, and trap simulated a cycling atmosphere and collected products.
Stanley Miller: American chemist who performed the 1953 spark-discharge experiment as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. Miller designed and ran the experiment that bears his name.
Abiogenesis: The emergence of life from nonliving matter through natural processes. The experiment addressed chemical steps relevant to abiogenesis but did not produce life.
Modern view of the early Earth's atmosphere: The view that Earth's early atmosphere was likely less strongly reducing than the methane-rich mixture used in the original experiment. This reassessment challenges how closely Miller's starting gases represented the planet.
Hadean atmosphere: The gases surrounding Earth during the Hadean eon, when the planet formed and its earliest crust developed. Its composition remains uncertain, limiting conclusions drawn from any single simulated gas mixture.
Electrical discharge: The passage of electric current through a gas, often producing sparks and reactive chemical species. Sparks supplied energy that drove reactions in the simulated atmosphere.
Harold Urey: American chemist who studied planetary atmospheres and supervised Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago. Urey proposed the project and advised Miller's experimental work.
Urey–Miller experiment follow-up studies: Later analyses and experiments that revisited the original samples or varied the simulated atmosphere and energy sources. Follow-up work expanded the range of detected compounds and tested the experiment's assumptions.
Reducing atmosphere: An atmosphere rich in substances that donate electrons, such as hydrogen or methane, relative to oxidizing gases. Miller's original gas mixture was strongly reducing, favoring organic synthesis under electrical discharge.
Miller–Urey experiment sample analysis: Modern chemical reanalysis of archived material from Miller's original experiments. Advanced instruments identified compounds that the original methods could not detect.

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