Question: How did life begin?

Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

Life probably first started when amino acids somehow worked out how to copy themselves. At some point they’ll have picked up a membrane to sit around them, and then they were the beginnings of a cell. It’s possible that this happened in the deep ocean around hydrothermal vents, where the water can come out at a mad 450*C or more. But where did those amino acids come from? In the 1950s scientists managed to make them in a lab by flashing electrical sparks across a mixture of hydrogen, water, ammonia and methane – chemicals that were probably present on the early Earth. In essence, they made the building blocks of life in a glass flask, using chemicals every school science department has. That’s pretty cool.