Meteorites May Have Delivered Seeds of Life On Earth 277
esocid writes "At the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, scientists presented evidence today that desert heat, a little water, and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first prerequisites for life. The result of that brew could be the dominance of "left-handed" amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet. Chains of amino acids make up the protein found in people, plants, and all other forms of life on Earth. There are two orientations of amino acids, left and right, which mirror each other in the same way your hands do. These amino acids "seeds" formed in interstellar space, possibly on asteroids as they careened through space. At the outset, they have equal amounts of left and right-handed amino acids. But as these rocks soar past neutron stars, their light rays trigger the selective destruction of one form of amino acid."
Discussed Organic Material in Meteor (Score:5, Informative)
Thought it had already been explained (Score:5, Informative)
Re:God vs. ...that. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thought it had already been explained (Score:5, Informative)
TY - JOUR
JO - Molecular Physics
PB - Taylor & Francis
AU - Tranter, G. E.
TI - The parity violating energy differences between the enantiomers of -amino acids
SN - 0026-8976
PY - 1985
VL - 56
IS - 4
SP - 825
EP - 838
UR - http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/00268978500102741 [informaworld.com]
Re:God vs. ...that. (Score:3, Informative)
The origin of life is thought to be some event whereby a self-copying structure was formed. Many believe this event is extremely rare. Perhaps it happens so rarely, that on one out of trillions of planets, in one of trillions of seconds, it happened by chance.
It is possible that this event cannot reasonably be catalyzed in a non-intrusive way. For example, maybe you can increase the odds by a factor of many millions, by putting forth the correct chemicals, but you might still be a factor of billions behind if some rare reaction is necessary. If you try to catalyze it by causing the chemical reaction then the experiment may lose credibility.
Re:Discussed Organic Material in Meteor (Score:4, Informative)
You're doing it wrong (Score:3, Informative)
You mean in popular scientific media. The origin of the first life is a very hot topic amongst those in biological disciplines, and there are several competing theories. I suggest you start with a bit of reading on Abiogenesis [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. You'll find quite a few relevant citations as well as a discussion of past and current models.
Re:God vs. ...that. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:God vs. ...that. (Score:3, Informative)
It seems funny to me that the whole thing stems from "the probability of that happening is so small that it couldn't possibly happen". No...the probability of that happening is so small that it makes it a near miracle that it happened. That is the whole damned point of probability. Determining the frequency of an event that COULD happen.