Episode 541 - The building blocks chemistry

Chemistry is complicated but it had to start somewhere. The origins of complex chemistry had to be built up from scratch. How did complex compounds form on early earth. How can we replicate the conditions of early earth and watch complex chemistry develop? Peering into chemical reactions is tricky because they can happen so fast. 

1. Zhong Yin, Yi-Ping Chang, Tadas Balčiūnas, Yashoj Shakya, Aleksa Djorović, Geoffrey Gaulier, Giuseppe Fazio, Robin Santra, Ludger Inhester, Jean-Pierre Wolf, Hans Jakob Wörner. Femtosecond proton transfer in urea solutions probed by X-ray spectroscopy. Nature, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06182-6