Recently some scientists have concluded that lightning may have played a part in the evolution of living organisms.

Nobel prize winning chemist Harold Urey proposed that the earth's early atmosphere consisted of ammonia, hydrogen, methane, and water vapor.

One of his students, Stanley Miller, used an electric spark to duplicate lightning and introduced it into the chemical brew.

He was careful to excluded any living organisms from the experiment.

At the end of a week, he examined the mixture and found it contained newly-formed amino acids, the very building blocks of protein.

Did lightning play a role in creating life itself?