system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How did inorganic matter combine to form the first life on earth, and have we been able to do it ourselves yet?

It seems to me that, providing that life arose spontaneously from elemental chemicals, we should be able to recreate those conditions and do it again, why haven't we?
gpt
We have, sort of.  The Miller-Urey experiment attempted to mimic the conditions of early earth, inside a lab, to see if they could recreate the chemical beginnings of life.  They put a bunch of water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen in a test tube and subjected it to heating (like from the earth's interior) and electrical sparks (like from lightning).  They ended up creating 20 or so distinct kinds of amino acids.