This year Science magazine will be celebrating Darwin’s big year with, among other things, a monthly series of essays on major evolutionary questions. The editors asked me to kick things off with an essay on the Big Kick Off–the origin of life. They’ve just posted my piece. Here’s how it starts:

Darwin saw the origin of life as beyond the scope of his methods for understanding biological history. But today scientists can test hypotheses for how life began with experiments that seemed like science fiction not long ago.

Read the full piece here or here. (I was also interviewed for this week’s podcast, to which you can listen here.)

And be sure to check out