Our planet was born 4.6 billion years ago as a great cloud of dust and gas condensed into a sphere. As gravity pulled this great cloud tightly together, heat from great pressure and radioactivity melted the planet's interior and most of its mass. For millions of years after this, strong volcanic activity all over the planet shook the earth's crust. At the same time, the earth was showered by a very strong meteor shower. From studying volcanoes, it is known that eruptions pour out carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other gases. It is also known that meteorites carry water, in the form of ice, and many carbon containing compounds. That might

Today, the theory of evolution is generally considered to be the most important fundamental concept in the biological sciences. Nearly all scientists support it. However, large numbers of people opposed the theory when it was introduces. Still, some people do not accept it today.

There are other theories for the origin of species including special creation and panspermia. Special creation involves humans. Many people believe that humans were created by God; so the theories of evolution go against their religions especially why they do not see God's hands in the process. As for panspermia, it suggests that life could have originated somewhere else and came to us from space. This might be possible but there is actually no supporting evidence for it.

Fox and his co-workers attempted to find an answer, to the origin of membranes and prokaryotes, in their laboratories. They heated amino acids without water and formed long protein chains. As water was added and the mixture cooled down, small microspheres were formed. These seemed to accumulate certain compounds inside them. They also attracted lipids and formed a lipid-protein layer around them, as mentioned above. Assuming that the microspheres combined with self-replicating molecules, we are looking at a very ancient organism. This is what might have happened 3.8 billion years ago as the first membranes and prokaryotes were forming.

This hypothesis was not enough, and more experiments had to be made. A British ecologist, called Kettlewell, prepared another test for this hypothesis. He placed equal numbers of light and dark colored moths in two types of areas. In one area, trees were normally colored. In the other area, they were blackened by soot. Later on, he recaptured, sorted, and counted all the moths he could, which were marked earlier by him. Kettlewell found that in unpolluted areas, more of his light-colored moths had survived. Kettlewell showed by his experiments that the moths that were better camouflaged had the higher survival rate. In conclusion, when the soot darkened the tree trunks in an area, natural selection caused the dark-colored moths to become more common. Kettlewell's work is considered to be a very good classic demonstration of natural selection in action.

6. http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html

Some common words found in the essay are:
DNA Eukaryotic, Earth Scientists, , Darwin's Wallace's, Revolution England, Miller Urey, Bruce Alberts, Jean Baptiste, Lynn Margulis, RNA DNA, natural selection, tree trunks, amino acids, dark-colored moths, earth's atmosphere, peppered moths, fossil record, nucleic acids, common ancestor, darwin's theory, necks ancestors stretched, theory natural selection, darwin's theory natural, ancestors stretched necks, earth's atmosphere formed,
Approximate Word count = 2709
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)