Space probe confirms chemicals found in comet’s halo helped bring Earth to life
Scientists detect key molecules – gylcine and phosphorus – essential to making proteins, DNA and cells in the dusty halo enveloping the comet
Scientists have found further evidence supporting the theory that some of the building blocks for life may have come to Earth from outer space.
Using instruments aboard the European space probe Rosetta, researchers detected glycine and phosphorus in the dusty halo around a comet. Glycine is an amino acid, one of the molecules needed to make proteins, while phosphorus is essential for DNA and cells.
Their presence in the coma enveloping comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko “supports the idea that comets delivered key molecules for prebiotic chemistry throughout the solar system and, in particular, to the early Earth”, according to the study published online on Friday by the journal Science Advances.
Scientists say adding a high concentration of those molecules to a body of water could have produced the “primordial soup” that gave birth to life on our planet more than four billion years ago.
“The beauty of it is that the material in the comet was formed before the Sun and planets formed, in the cold environment of the star forming region [known as the] molecular cloud,” said Kathrin Altwegg, a physicist at the University of Bern, Switzerland, who led the study.
The beauty of it is that the material in the comet was formed before the Sun and planets formed, in the cold environment of the star forming region [known as the] molecular cloud
“That means what has happened a long time ago in the cloud from which our solar system emerged could happen in all clouds.
