The origin of life has remained one of the most enigmatic open problems in science because we have lacked a formal language with which to describe life's key properties. Assembly theory (AT) see 1 is an explanatory framework recently proposed to address a number of unsolved questions related to the origin of evolution and selection, with the stated goal to allow unambiguous detection of the signatures of any evolutionary process. By providing a formal theoretical and experimental approach to determine whether or not observed objects are necessarily the product of evolution, AT opens new avenues of research for life detection, the design of synthetic life, the design of experiments to probe the de novo origin of life in the laboratory, and ways to look deeper into the history of life on Earth (e.g., predating the evolution of the genome). In this talk I will explain the theory, the experimental validation and how we are building selection engines for the emergence of evolution aiming for a bottom-up artificial life-form in the laboratory using inorganic chemicals, see Figure. Figure: The figure shows the expansion of assembly spaces where Assembly Possible (AP, shown in black) represents all physically plausible objects, Assembly Contingent (AC, shown in blue) represents all known objects, and Assembly Observed (AO, Assembly Observed, shown in red). The living threshold represents the complexity threshold over which the observed molecule in high abundance signifies the presence of life. (b) Example of an expanding assembly space of an ensemble where at each assembly depth, observed and contingent objects exist.