This scene models prebiotic chemical evolution: simple monomers (amino-acid-like spheres) drift by thermal (Brownian) motion inside a sealed flask, echoing the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment where electrical sparks drove synthesis of organic compounds from a reducing atmosphere.
Whenever two unbonded monomers come within bonding range, the probability that they polymerise is governed by the Arrhenius equation, which links reaction rate to temperature and an activation-energy barrier:
k(T) = A · exp(−Ea / (R·T))
P(bond in Δt) = 1 − exp(−k·Δt)
Here A is the pre-exponential (collision) factor, Ea the activation energy, R the gas constant, and T the soup's temperature. Chains that grow past 6 linked monomers are rendered as translucent gold vesicles — simple protocells, a candidate step toward the first self-organising cellular boundaries.
- Thermal / Energy Input — sets the soup temperature T (200–600 K), which raises both molecular speed and the Arrhenius rate k.
- Molecule Count — how many monomers are dissolved in the flask, changing collision frequency.
- ⚡ Discharge — fires a 1.2 s lightning strike that spikes the effective collision factor A twenty-fold, mimicking the Miller-Urey spark electrode.
- Reset Soup — clears all bonds and reseeds fresh monomers.
Real chemical evolution research uses exactly this kind of rate-limited, temperature-dependent bonding model to explain how ordered polymers and membrane-bound protocells could emerge from disordered prebiotic chemistry without any external design.