Life's Building Block Found in Comet

Source: SPACE.com


SPACE.com Space.com Staff

space.com – Mon Aug 17, 3:32 pm ET

A fundamental ingredient for life has been discovered in a comet sample, supporting the idea that such icy objects seeded early Earth with the stuff needed to whip up living organisms.

New research firms up past suggestions of glycine, the simplest amino acid used to make proteins, inside samples from the comet Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt 2").

"This is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said lead researcher Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."
..............
Glycine molecules from space tend to have more of the heavier Carbon 13 atoms than glycine from Earth. That's exactly what the team found.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090817/sc_space/lifesbuildingblockfoundincomet

thanks for sharing!

He works in very mysterious ways! :P

;-)

... so much for the Creationist Museum!! :rofl:

and it might have been contaminated with Alien DNA.... and now it's back on earth on a microchip... aaaaaaaaaaaaargh

Skinner gonna tombstone me... Fox where are you ?

...that posited this same theory? I can't remember the name of it.

that all the ingredients for life are in Space.

All og which can be arranged in endless combinations to form some unimaginable versions of life and intelligent life as well.

It is the simplest amino acid -- it does not even have a chiral center, so there are no left/right handed forms, as there are with other amino acids. Simply mixing formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, and ammonia is sufficient to produce alpha-aminoacetonitrile, which reacts slowly with water to produce glycine. The needed reactants (H2CO, HCH, NH3, H2O) have all been found in comets and planetary atmospheres outside of Earth. It seems highly likely that glycine could have formed in large quantities on primitive Earth, without comets being needed for "import". That's not to say that comets don't carry organic compounds -- it just doesn't matter that they do, as there would be such a huge buildup of them in Earth's primitive oceans that comets would hardly make any difference.

:yoiks:

Thanks for sharing!