ABSTRACT
C learly, molecular complexity was a precondition for biogenesis. Contiguous molecular structures are monkey bars for electrons that provide the stream o f energy required to extend that complexity to a level not observed in the abiotic world and to constantly renew the framework of life. Electrons built these structures via overlapping orbitals but for that to happen one needs solvated molecules dancing about each other to the tune o f thermal motion until they stick together as their tiny magnets click. Long structures, branches, triangles, pentagons fused to hexagons; quite a panorama. One would observe, if possible, that molecules sort themselves by structural fit, leaving out the bulk o f molecules which, in turn, may associate in different affinity groups. Nucleotides were favored structures which were produced in large amounts because the monomers were removed from the equilib rium by polymerization to form long chain nucleic acids, and that constantly shifted the equilibrium to produce more monomers and so on, leapfrogging to the first pla teau in biogenesis, the potential genomic material. So, it was not a desert and it was not an ocean o f infinite dilution, it was a field o f perfect opportunity with moisture and temperature cycles that supported primordial chemistry under the unique condi tion that an earthlike planet produces only once in its history.
