The Beginnings of Exobiology

Nineteenth-century spectroscopes allowed astronomers to record emission spectra of stars, comets, and planets, and even to discover a new element (helium) on the Sun. In Germany, Hermann Vogel (1842-1907) discovered that the major components of Jupiter s atmosphere are hydrogen and helium, very similar to the Sun. In the earlier years of the 20th century, Vesto M. Slipher (1875-1969), at the Lowell Observatory, recorded spectra from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and in the early 1930s German astronomer Rupert Wildt (1905-76) analyzed them and discovered traces of methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) in the atmospheres of these frigid outer planets. 

Stanley Miller s 1953 prebiotic soup experiment apparatus (University of California, San Diego) 

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