
The 1952 (Miller-Urey experiment) warm pond experiment of American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. [2]

The 1952 (Miller-Urey experiment) warm pond experiment of American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. [2]

In science, warm pond model (TR:68), aka Darwin’s warm pond, argues that life began in a warm pond about 3.9 billion years ago.

Overview
In 1871, Englishman naturalist Charles Darwin, in a letter to botanist Joseph Hooker, posited or conjectured the warm pond origin of life theory theory as: [1]

“The original spark of life may have begun in a warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc., present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes.”

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Miller-Urey experiment
The first attempt at proof or disproof of Darwin’s warm pond hypothesis, came from American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, who added electricity (see: lightning origin of life theory) to a chemical broth (an "ocean" of liquid water and an "atmosphere" of hydrogen-rich gases, e.g. methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and water vapor) for several days, after which they found that the vessel had “formed all sorts of compounds, including large quantities of amino acids.” [1] In short, Miller and Urey showed that sparks ignited in a chemical broth, over several days, could make amino acids.

Difficulties on theory

See main: Unbridgeable gap; Defunct theory of life

The results of the Miller-Urey experiment combined with recent fossil records, indicated that bacterial existed on the earth about 3.85 billion years ago, have led to the belief that 'once upon a time', three or four billion years ago, lightning struck a puddle of water containing a kind of warm chemical chicken broth and triggered the formation of amino acids, the building blocks of life. This type of logic, however, is inconsistent with standard molecular evolution tables that show a continuous build up and lineage of molecular structure (via mechanism), a table that cannot be divided by a certain hypothetical day. In other words, the laws of chemistry don't simply stop on a particular day and give their powers over to the laws of biology. The reverse is true, the laws of chemistry and thermodynamics are what define evolution and the laws of biology are only approximations. [3]

Theism
The following is “was Darwin wrong” diagram (Ѻ) of the “primordial pond” model, by intelligent design advocate Gert Korthof, showing how the theist thinks about Darwin's warm pond model origin of things:

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See also
● Molecules-to-man evolution
● Primordial soup

References
1. Darwin, Charles. (1871). “Letter to Joseph Hooker”, in: The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, Vol 3. (pg. 18). John Murray.
2. Miller-Urey experiment – Wikipedia.
3. (a) Gladyshev, Georgi, P. (1997). Thermodynamic Theory of the Evolution of Living Beings. Commack, New York: Nova Science Publishers.
(b) Avery, John (2003). Information Theory and Evolution. New Jersey: World Scientific.

Further reading
● Pacchili, David. (2001). “Reflections From a Warm Little Pond”, SpaceDaily.com, May 10.
● Armstrong, John. (2009). “Did Life on Earth Begin in a ‘Little warm Pond’?”, ScienceClarified.com, Jul 14.