So just how big a problem is it to prove origin of life?

There are currently 7 main theories on the origin of life on earth:

- Electric Spark - Electric sparks can generate amino acids and sugars from an atmosphere loaded with water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen

- Community Clay - These surfaces might not only have concentrated these organic compounds together, but also helped organize them into patterns much like our genes do now.

- Deep-Sea Vents - life may have begun at submarine hydrothermal vents, spewing key hydrogen-rich molecules.

- Chilly Start - Ice might have covered the oceans 3 billion years ago, as the sun was about a third less luminous than it is now. This layer of ice, possibly hundreds of feet thick, might have protected fragile organic compounds in the water below from ultraviolet light and destruction from cosmic impacts. The cold might have also helped these molecules to survive longer, allowing key reactions to happen.

- RNA World - RNA, which can store information like DNA, serve as an enzyme like proteins, and help create both DNA and proteins. Later DNA and proteins succeeded this "RNA world," because they are more efficient.

- Simple Beginnings - Instead of developing from complex molecules such as RNA, life might have begun with smaller molecules interacting with each other in cycles of reactions. These might have been contained in simple capsules akin to cell membranes, and over time more complex molecules that performed these reactions better than the smaller ones could have evolved, scenarios dubbed "metabolism-first" models, as opposed to the "gene-first" model of the "RNA world" hypothesis.

- Panspermia - Perhaps life did not begin on Earth at all, but was brought here from elsewhere in space,

All have their scientific basis and all have a certain amount of issues

The first living things were small.

Three billion years is a long time.

For how long have we really been looking for it?

What kind of answer do you expect?

If the next ten generations also do not find a precise answer, would that make the stories about Zeus true?

Proofs are for mathematics -- for everything else, there's varying degrees of evidence for or against.

That said, we estimate that it likely took tens or even hundreds of millions of years for the first cells to form, and we've only investigating the "how" for less than a hundred. It's not that unreasonable that we haven't been able to replicate the effects in the lab just yet.

We've already seen that most of the essential building blocks basically self-assemble, given the conditions we believe were present on the primordial Earth. And even if we grant the skeptics that it's extremely unlikely that all the conditions were "just right" and those pieces all fell together in the right way to form the first cell-like organism, it's important to keep in mind that it only had to happen ONCE -- on one of a billion billion planets, each covered with millions of square miles of water -- for evolution to naturally, inevitably lead to the proliferation and diversity of life we see today.

Life started in hexagonal water that was not polluted as all water is on earth today!!! When was god ever seen by anymore than one person at any one time??? No real or true gods or devils or heavens or hells exist any where outside of any ones inculcated minds!!! Religions are only con man made up tax free organizations for profit not for love!!! That means life started on earth on its own with only the heat from the sun and the nutrients, the elements and the minerals that were in the water at the time that life started, whether or not those elements and minerals came from space traveling comets or if they were here when earth formed!!!

The problem in science is that there are many potential origins, but which one is real? Science requires that proof be provided, but the evidence of what happened some billions of years ago has not yet been uncovered.

Fortunately, we have religion which does not require nonsense like evidence or proof.

Energy, frequency and vibration make the universe, and mind makes life.

What makes the mind? Neurons? No. Bacretia don't have neurons, yet they're subjects to evolution. Evolution is the process of becoming, which is determined by recorded information and how the "mind" reacts to it.

All is mind.

Is it really that big a problem to solve, or they always just barking up the wrong tree?

- Try joining the 21st century, abiogenesis has been proven.

I can tell you this much: The lightly educated slackers on both sides of this argument are never helpful in coming to a conclusion here in Yahoo Answers.

As soon as we find it elsewhere it will be much less of a problem to prove the ubiquitous potential.

The whole thing is waste of money. It's just a gigantic make-work project that is irrelevant to anything.