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Redi's experiment
In 1668, Francesco Redi, an Italian scientist, designed a scientific experiment to test the spontaneous creation of maggots by placing fresh meat in each of two different jars. ... Redi successfully demonstrated that the maggots came from fly eggs and thereby helped to disprove spontaneous generation. Or so he thought. -
Needham's rebuttal
In 1745, John Needham (1713–1781) published a report of his own experiments, in which he briefly boiled broth infused with plant or animal matter, hoping to kill all preexisting microbes. He then sealed the flasks. ... This suggested that microbes were introduced into these flasks from the air. -
Spallanzani
Spallanzani's experiment showed that it is not an inherent feature of matter, and that it can be destroyed by an hour of boiling. As the microbes did not re-appear as long as the material was hermetically sealed, he proposed that microbes move through the air and that they could be killed through boiling. -
Pasteur experiment
Pasteur's experiment showed that microbes cannot arise from nonliving materials under the conditions that existed on Earth during his lifetime. But his experiment did not prove that spontaneous generation never occurred. Eons ago, conditions on Earth and in the atmosphere above it were vastly different. Indeed, conditions similar to those found on primitive Earth may have existed, or may exist now, on other bodies in our solar system and elsewhere.