PAPER Topics

Start of Term Paper
------------------------ Soup or Sandwich IN THE VERY BEGINNING, about 4.6 billion years ago (give or take a few years), a small ball of rock, water and gas had come to be and immedi- ately set about the process of combining its atoms into ....

Middle of Term Paper
... first took place in the upper atmosphere, where ultraviolet radiation from the sun could generate an assortment of simple and complex organic (carbon- based) molecules out of the basic components of the atmos- phere. As these molecules slowly rained into the early oceans, a kind of primordial soup was created. Via the ultraviolet radiation, light- ning, volcanic action, and other forms of heat and energy, this soup was able to slowly combine the organic molecules into ever more com- plex forms: first simple amino acids, then organic macromolecules, then single-strand RNA molecules, and finally simple viruses. The only trouble with ...