ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY AND LIFE Almost a century ago (1887) Charles Darwin considered electricity as one of the possible factors in the origin of life on Earth. A more distinct correlation between the formation of organic compounds and electrical phenomena in the atmosphere was formulated in the 1920's. In 1939, R. Beutner indicated the powerful electric discharges in the atmosphere as a factor facilitating the synthesis of certain amino acids. During the years 1938-1947, the French scientist A. Dovillier repeatedly stated that these •discharges must have contributed to the synthesis of high-molecular organic compounds. Such formations, by means of diverse spatial combinations of the particles throughout countless millenia, might have accidentally led to the emergence of the simplest organisms. Nature required many billions of various chance combinations before it produced the primary, self reproducing life substance, resembling the filterable virus, followed after considerable time by the appearance of the first microorganisms: the bacilli. Dovillier maintained that the probability of metabolism and self reproduction in such chance combinations of organic molecules is very small.
All these speculations concerning the role of electrical discharges in the atmosphere would have remained mere hypotheses or theoretical as sumptions, had it not been for remarkable syntheses performed a few years ago (1953) by the American scientist S. Miller in his laboratory on the basis
of modern concepts concerning the composition of the primary terrestrial atmosphere. By means of a high-voltage installation he produced silent electrical discharges in a mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and vapor, and obtained a series of amino acids: glycine, alanine, sarcosine, and aminobutyric acid. He also obtained glycolic, lactic, formic, acetic, propionic, and other acids.
Miller reported that as a result of the electrical discharge, cyanic acid, amines, aldehydes, alcohols, large amounts of volatile acids, and acry lonitriles were formed. All these substances were formed in the gaseous phase bythe silent electrical discharge as a result of reactions of free radicals and ions. Consequently, at some time electrical discharges were instrumental in converting nonliving matter into living matter...
It should be mentioned that these ideas were expressed by the author of this article sixteen years before Miller (in 1937), and published under the editorship of A. Errer.