That's why I said it is a refinement. Miller used hydrogen, ammonia, and methane as a proto atmosphere. The compounds he created are more impressive to me than this. He used that which we know to be in the atmospheres of the various planets and created the building blocks of life. The vents are truly alien life though. They get no energy from the Sun, they are purely using chemical energy for their life cycles and that is remarkable.
The disconnect I have is the claim that the vents make the enzymes. There is no proof of that. The enzymes could just as easily have come from the detritus of the tube worms in the area.
Except the computer simulations didn't use detritus and generated the same results:
The team combined laboratory experiments with supercomputer simulations to investigate the conditions under which the mineral particles would catalyse the conversion of CO2 into organic molecules. The experiments replicated the conditions present in deep sea vents, where hot and slightly alkaline water rich in dissolved CO2 passes over the mineral greigite (Fe3S4), located on the inside surfaces of the vents. These experiments hinted at the chemical processes that were underway. The simulations, which were run on UCL's Legion supercomputer and HECToR (the UK national supercomputing service), provided a molecule-by-molecule view of how the CO2 and greigite interacted, helping to make sense of what was being observed in the experiments. The computing power and programming expertise to accurately simulate the behaviour of individual molecules in this way has only become available in the past decade.
"We found that the surfaces and crystal structures inside these vents act as catalysts, encouraging chemical changes in the material that settles on them," says Nathan Hollingsworth, a co-author of the study. "They behave much like enzymes do in living organisms, breaking down the bonds between carbon and oxygen atoms. This lets them combine with water to produce formic acid, acetic acid, methanol and pyruvic acid. Once you have simple carbon-based chemicals such as these, it opens the door to more complex carbon-based chemistry."
Since when are computer models data? Get with the program dude. Too many failures have cropped up for "simple" computer models to be taken seriously anymore.
OMG, have you ever even used one? Of course you haven't. When a computer model simulates laboratory results, which simulates findings in the real world, that is anything but a failure. The only failure here is your understanding.
Of course I have. I also understand that they are not DATA. Any good scientist KNOWS that. When did you forget that fact? The point is, there is biologic detritus everywhere in a vent. Who's to say they aren't the source of the observed enzymes? Hmmmm?
Sure you have. So why don't I believe you? The point is that the laboratory experiments, which didn't have detritus, and the models, which also didn't have detritus, produced the same results as analyses at the vents. Explain how all those results are the same if detritus is really an issue. You can't because it isn't.
I don't care what a known liar, such as yourself, "believes". Science isn't about "belief", it is about facts. Funny how a simpleton who claims to be a geologist, and then doesn't seem to know that geology is considered a "hard" science, or an exact science if you prefer, would place so much emphasis on models.
Models are not data. They never will be data. The study is interesting, but not earth shattering. That is my point. Leave it to a poseur to conflate the two.