I personally believe that the origin of life started with something we would not recognize as such today. I imagine that it started with some long molecules in

I personally believe that the origin of life started with something we would not recognize as such today. I imagine that it started with some long molecules in water and they have the ability to grow longer and longer. Maybe they looped around and the dynamics of the system meant that if they oriented toward the sun better they would be more numerous. Maybe if their composition was a little bit different they would acquire material from the surrounding bath more efficiently. This creates a gradient of success where the topmost molecules will do better than the bottom most molecules. Similar perturbations would allow them to acquire more material more efficiently in a pantomime of eating. Reproduction would be something as simple as breaking in half. This is of course a just so story, but it's one that I find pretty compelling. But I would like it if people thought more about what these early systems looked like rather than be so hand wavy. I think it's unlikely that any of these very early forms of life survive as they were consumed by subsequent generations. It also seems unlikely that they would form very often spontaneously such that we might find examples in nature. If such a form develops only once in a million years in a planet-wide irradiated bath, then we would have a huge challenge. Even simulating such a system to find what that structure might be. So instead I think we should use our imaginations and imagine what the simplest possible system could possibly work in that circumstance to bootstrap life.