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chemistry
wakes up
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Was it a tarry puddle near a sulfurous geyser? Was it a boiling turmoil at the edge of an undersea volcano? Was it a bubbling vein deep in the earth? Somewhere, somehow, something amazing happened. In a rich stew of complex chemicals, a gooey blob formed that could split into two similar blobs, then grow to do it again.
The first cells on Earth were little more than tiny globules surrounded by oily membranes, filled with complex, highly variable mixtures of molecules. But in all their haphazard variety, they were independent, self-reproducing things, and that made all the difference. Natural selection took hold as soon as the best ones were able to make more of their kind.
