A tenuous consensus has developed about what origin of life researchers are looking for. If you would try to really boil it down, most people will agree that a living thing has like a small sort of short list of properties. It can hold itself together like it doesn't just fall apart. Life probably has some kind of a metabolism. And then finally there's basic life cell property number three.
How did life on Earth start? To help answer that, researchers are trying to create some life for themselves.
This is the second episode in our three-part series, Origins, about the beginnings and boundaries of life on Earth.
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