The ARS Hypothesis in the Origin of Life

This work presents a conceptual modification of the classical Stanley Miller experiment, focused on the role of water as an active agent in prebiotic processes. The proposed hypothesis assumes that, in liquid water and under specific physical conditions, transient and partially ordered clusters of water molecules may spontaneously form, stabilized by a network of hydrogen bonds. Within this framework, it is assumed that selected organic compounds may be preferentially bound and spatially oriented by such aqueous structures and may subsequently gradually replace key water molecules within the cluster. This process would lead to a progressive transformation of the initial water-based structure into a chemical system of increasing complexity and potential biological activity. Water is not treated here as a passive solvent background for reactions, but rather as a dynamic supramolecular scaffold capable of directing the organization and condensation of organic monomers. The work emphasizes the physical aspects of self-organization, in particular the role of the hydrogen-bond network structure of water and of systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium, rather than the specific chemistry of individual compounds. In this view, primary “structural information” does not need to be encoded within the organic molecules themselves, but may instead emerge from their interaction with the physical environment. Because the fundamental properties of water are universal and identical on a cosmic scale, this hypothesis implies that mechanisms inducing proto-biological complexity may operate in a similar manner across diverse planetary environments. Consequently, the emergence of life would not represent an exceptionally rare event, but rather a natural outcome of interactions between water, simple organic compounds, and cyclic energy sources. The present work is conceptual in nature and serves as a starting point for further experimental investigations into the role of water structure in abiogenesis and into the physical mechanisms leading to the formation of ordered chemical systems with biological potential.