Final answer:
The Miller-Urey experiments demonstrated that organic compounds could be formed from inorganic materials in Earth's early atmosphere using electric sparks to simulate lightning.
Step-by-step explanation:
Stanley Miller and Harold Urey's Experiment
The experiments conducted by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey tested whether electricity could trigger the formation of simple organic compounds from inorganic substances. Their groundbreaking work used a simulation to recreate the environment of Earth's early atmosphere, which included gases such as ammonia, methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide. The researchers utilized electric sparks to mimic the effect of lightning, a common event in the ancient atmosphere.
This electricity interacted with the gas mixture, leading to the synthesis of amino acids, which are the basic building blocks of proteins and vital components for the development of life. Their findings supported the hypothesis that life's fundamental elements could have originated from non-organic materials through natural processes similar to those they reproduced in their laboratory.