Dawn of Earth! Abiogenesis!

### **Program: Dawn of Earth! Abiogenesis**

**Description:**
Journey back to the beginning of time with our 4-week "Dawn of Earth" program! This hands-on adventure explores the violent and awe-inspiring origins of our planet. Students will become geologists, paleontologists, and chemists as they investigate the powerful forces that shaped our world.

**Weekly Breakdown:**

* **Week 1: The Primordial Soup & Life's Blueprint:** Recreate the conditions of the early Earth, explore the famous Miller-Urey experiment, and identify the four essential chemical building blocks of life—amino acids, nucleotides, lipids, and sugars.

* **Week 2: The Energy Problem & Hydrothermal Vents:** Investigate the leading scientific theories for life's energy source. We'll explore the idea of a "warm little pond" powered by lightning and then dive deep into the fascinating world of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, analyzing the evidence for and against this hypothesis.

* **Week 3: The Assembly Challenge (Dr. James Tour's Critique):** Confront the immense engineering problem of assembling simple molecules into functional proteins and information-carrying DNA, as highlighted by the critiques of renowned chemist Dr. James Tour.

* **Week 4: The First Cell & The Unsolved Mystery:** Tackle the final hurdles of forming a cell membrane and creating a self-replicating system, framing abiogenesis as one of science's most exciting unsolved puzzles.