An illustration of the viscous “primordial soup" that could have fostered the first self-replicating strands of DNA, heated and cooled as the Earth moved between day and night 4 billion year sago. (Christine He/Georgia Tech)The term "primordial soup" was coined nearly 100 years ago to describe the mysterious chemical broth that was home to Earth's very first self-replicating organisms. Ever since, scientists have been trying to cook that soup up in a lab, searching for the exact combination of compounds that gave rise to life as we know it some 4 billion years ago.
