Scientists find cosmic factory for life's building blocks
 The origins of life on Earth have mystified and fascinated scientists
for centuries. Now, researchers believe they have added a vital piece to
the jigsaw with the discovery that, under certain circumstances,
collisions between icy comets and planets produce amino acids, the basic
building blocks of life.
The team from Imperial College London, the University of Kent and
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory simulated a 15,000mph collision
and found that the amino acids were created in the searing heat and
pressure of the impact, from a mixture of more basic substances found on
comets, including ammonia, carbon dioxide and methanol, a form of
alcohol. The discovery also has implications for the hunt for
extraterrestrial life. Ice on the surfaces of Enceladus and Europa, the
moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter respectively, could provide the
perfect conditions for producing amino acids from meteor impacts. The
researchers said their findings "suggest a pathway for the synthetic
production of the components of proteins within our solar system, and
thus a potential pathway towards life through icy impacts".
Dr Zita Martins of Imperial College London said they had tried a
range of different mixtures during the near four-year project before
getting positive results. "I'm not going to say it was a eureka moment,
but I was extremely happy," she said.
Earth was bombarded by comets and meteorites between 4.5 billion and
3.8 billion years ago and life is thought to have originated about 3.5
billion years ago. Dr Martins said the next steps in the origin of life
remained "one of the big questions" in science.
- The Independent |
