primordial soup

noun

, Biology.

1. the seas and atmosphere as they existed on earth before the existence of life, consisting primarily of an oxygen-free gaseous mixture containing chiefly water, hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide.
2. a laboratory preparation containing the substances believed to have composed primordial soup, and used in experiments seeking to understand the origin of life.

primordial soup

/ prī-môr′dē-əl /

1. A liquid rich in organic compounds and providing favorable conditions for the emergence and growth of life forms. Oceans of primordial soup are thought to have covered the Earth during the Precambrian Eon billions of years ago. The organic compounds in the primordial soup, such as amino acids, may have been produced by reactions in the Earth's early atmosphere, which was probably rich in methane and ammonia. The complex self-replicating organic molecules that were the precursors to life on Earth may have developed in this primordial soup.

Word History and Origins

Origin of primordial soup¹

First recorded in 1925–30

Example Sentences

Thanks to the development of these droplets, the researchers have made headway in answering basic questions about biological movement -- and in doing so, they have gained insight into the directed movement of the earliest forms of life in the primordial soup billions of years ago, as well as a lead on creating new biologically inspired materials.

From Science Daily

A prominent hypothesis is that life originated in the oceans, as organic molecules gradually assembled and became more sophisticated in a 'primordial soup' -- and this could have been facilitated by chemotaxis through the Marangoni effect.

From Science Daily

While such reactions are possible to recreate in the laboratory thanks to manual intermediate steps, it is highly challenging for them to come about in a simple 'primordial soup' -- that is to say, a very dilute mixture of prebiotic building blocks.

From Science Daily

"And so life could have emerged from a simple, cold prebiotic primordial soup of RNA building blocks," explains Braun.

From Science Daily

But Ernst can imagine that in certain surface-catalyzed chemical reactions -- such as those that could have taken place in the chemical "primordial soup" on the early Earth -- a certain combination of electric and magnetic fields could have led to a steady accumulation of one form or another of the various biomolecules -- and thus ultimately to the handedness of life.

From Science Daily