Abstract: The environment in which life emerged almost certainly involved stochastic variations (“noise”) in the composition and concentration of molecular components, catalysts, fluid flow, temperature, and other conditions. Wächtershäuser, de Duve, and others have postulated that thioesters (or sulfur containing compounds) may have played a critical role in early metabolism, primarily as chemical reservoirs of energy. For these theories to have merit, conditions would have needed to exist where mixtures of “molecular reactions...