Question

What is Primordial soup?

Answer 1

Primordial soup is an important part of the Oparin- Haldane heterotrophic theory of the origin of life on Earth. It is a hypothetical but generic concept that describes the external environment of organisms on the Earth's surface that existed 4 to 3.7 billion years ago.

Complete answer:
Primordial soup, also known as prebiotic soup, is a set of conditions present in the Earth billions of years ago which is the fundamental aspect to the origin of life (the heterotrophic theory). It is a hypothetical concept and was first introduced by Alexander Oparin in 1924. He stated that on the surface of the primitive Earth, the inorganic materials carbon, hydrogen, water vapor, and ammonia reacted and gave rise to the first organic compounds. Later in 1929, a similar conclusion was circulated by John Birdon Sanderson Haldane and he used the term "soup" to describe the accumulation of organic materials and water.
According to the heterotrophic theory, the primordial soup is the mixture of the compounds synthesized under the prebiotic condition on Earth around 4 to 3.7 billion years ago with water.
The primordial soup was the external environment that Oparin talked about in his work that involved the slow evolution of complex organisms from simple microorganisms and the organic substance present in their external environment.
The heterotrophic theory is given by Oparin- Haldane is widely accepted now due to the base that a heterotrophic organism is far simpler than an autotrophic one and how easy it is to produce organic compounds from inorganic ones.

Note: It is very necessary to make the distinction between prebiotic and abiotic processes that occurred on the earth's surface. Prebiotic soup is a synonym for primordial soup therefore, those two shouldn’t be confused. On the other hand, the abiotic process occurs without the presence of life and the prebiotic process occurred in the atmospheric and chemical conditions that existed in the primitive Earth.