Science word of the day: Abiogenesis

Science word of the day: Abiogenesis What does 'abiogenesis' mean? Science word of the day: Abiogenesis Pronunciation: Ay-bye-oh-JEN'-ih-sis What it means: Abiogenesis is the emergence of life from nonliving matter through chemical processes. Scientists still don't know exactly how abiogenesis happened on Earth. Theories range from lightning strikes that could have scrambled water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen into amino acids and sugars — the building blocks of life — to chemical reactions at deep-sea vents. Abiogenesis is not the same as spontaneous generation, which held that living organisms such as maggots formed directly from decaying matter. It was a compelling idea for anyone who had watched meat rot, but Louis Pasteur, inventor of pasteurization, disproved it in the 1860s by showing that microbes could only grow from preexisting microbes. How to use it in a sentence: All life on Earth may owe itself to an incident of abiogenesis more than 3.7 billion years ago. Can you crack our science word of the day puzzle, Chain Word? Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. [Image text:] ABIOGENESIS Abiogenesis Abiogenesis Abiogenesis Abiogertesis Abiogene Abiogenesis Abiogenesis