cool, now they just have to discover how to create souls.

That might be a hard one because they're not even known to exist :P

I'm still waiting for my Flying cars that were supposed to be mass produced around 1980.

I think I speak for everybody when I say:

Whoa.

How would you define soul though? Is it something spiritual and intangeble or is it conscienceness? The latter would be a step along the way to what we eventually want to achieve I imagine

Agreed.

Despite whatever outcome people wish to make, if they begin to replicate it would point to the theory that life started off simple, which helps out a lot in understanding the natural world. Also in a few thousand years of intelligent society we have accomplished what took nature millions of years to achieve.

Awesome stuff. Now lets create a slave race.

That's sorta what technolgy is for us these days....also I don't want a slave race skynet happening...

Does that make us gods?

This article just shows what pre-life chemistry may have looked like.  This happens naturaly, which isnt that suprising considering probability, but its difficult to watch it happen since the odds are so low and living organisms quickly use such chemistry for their own biological systems.  A nucleotide doesnt have much time to sit and mutate into different forms when it is constantly being consumed and recycled by organisms in its environment.

"The molecules haven’t yet achieved self-replication, the ultimate benchmark of life, but they hint at it."

I guess we'll have to wait and see.