Also, primordial soups don’t necessarily have to be in chemical equilibrium. If the soup is sitting in sunlight, then it could very easily be out of chemical equilibrium, and probably would be. (Soups could be out of equilibrium for a variety of other reasons too, like a consistent influx of chemicals coming out of the ground.) Sunlight comes from a surface with a temperature of 5700K. Compared to a puddle with a temperature of 300K sitting on the Earth’s surface, those photons are absurdly energetic, and could easily bump up the prevalence of some molecules that would otherwise have too much free-energy to exist.
Once you have excess free energy, copying information becomes possible, and it becomes conceivable that you could have self-copying information, aka life.
Also, primordial soups don’t necessarily have to be in chemical equilibrium. If the soup is sitting in sunlight, then it could very easily be out of chemical equilibrium, and probably would be. (Soups could be out of equilibrium for a variety of other reasons too, like a consistent influx of chemicals coming out of the ground.) Sunlight comes from a surface with a temperature of 5700K. Compared to a puddle with a temperature of 300K sitting on the Earth’s surface, those photons are absurdly energetic, and could easily bump up the prevalence of some molecules that would otherwise have too much free-energy to exist.
Once you have excess free energy, copying information becomes possible, and it becomes conceivable that you could have self-copying information, aka life.