Cheltenham HS

 9/29/97 
 The Origin of Life- An Opinion Essay
 
 
 Life includes everything from the smallest organisms to 
 the entire biosphere. It is a miracle. Life is not 
 just one organism, but rather it is billions of little 
 cells working together to make the Earth complete. 
 Each living thing is a microcosm of the universe. Life 
 is amazing. It is bright colors and loud sounds. Life is 
 energy from the sun in millions of different shapes that 
 keep changing. Margulis and Sagan (1995) say, "Life is 
 evolutionary exuberance, it is what happens when expanding 
 populations of sensing, active organisms knock up against 
 each other and work things out. It is a marvel of 
 inventions for cooling and warming, collecting and 
 dispersing, eating and evading, wooing and deceiving. 
 Life is awareness and responsiveness, it is consciousness 
 and self consciousness." The definition of life is 
 different for every person. No one really knows what 
 life is. Emily Dickinson summed it up well when she 
 said, "There is not so much to life as talk of life, 
 as a general thing. Had we the first intimation of 
 the definition of life, the calmest of us would be 
 lunatics!" 
 
 I agree with Alexander Oparin about the origin 
 of life. He believed that life originated through 
 chemical evolution. At one point, the correct 
 proportions and combinations of elements to form 
 life appeared on earth. The primitive atmosphere 
 contained methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor. 
 Energy was available in the form of UV radiation, 
 lightning and volcanoes. When Stanley Miller and 
 Harold Urey circulated those gases with water vapor 
 past a high energy spark, they found amino acids, 
 the building blocks of life. Also, the four elements, 
 carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, that make up 
 ninety-five percent of living tissue were in the 
 atmosphere. Therefore, Oparin's theory that life 
 was formed through chemical evolution is the most 
 scientifically convincing.
 
 References:
 Margulis, Lynn, and Sagan, Dorion. What Is Life? 
 New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1995.