Cometary Impacts May Have Provided Key Elements of Life

trendspotter writes with news of research indicating that impact events might be responsible for seeding the Earth with reactive forms of the precursors to amino acids. From the article: "Early Earth was not very hospitable when it came to jump starting life. In fact, new research shows that life on Earth may have come from out of this world. Lawrence Livermore scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute of Technology colleague Isaac Tamblyn (a former LLNL postdoc) found that icy comets that crashed into Earth millions of years ago could have produced life building organic compounds, including the building blocks of proteins and nucleobases pairs of DNA and RNA. Comets contain a variety of simple molecules, such as water, ammonia, methanol and carbon dioxide, and an impact event with a planetary surface would provide an abundant supply of energy to drive chemical reactions." The paper (PDF).

Wait, what?

[gstoddart]

Is this even a new idea?

I've heard this for quite some time now, and I thought this was a prevailing understanding.

Re:Wait, what?

[telchine]

Is this even a new idea?

I've heard this for quite some time now, and I thought this was a prevailing understanding.

It's like that news story that comes up every few months... Scientist Discover Signs of Water on Mars!

Re:Except..

[Sockatume]

And comets only appeared last Tuesday?

commetary life

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we kicking the can down the road now ? Where does cometary life come from ? This is a circular argument.

Re:commetary life

[wonkey_monkey]

No-one's saying there was life on the comets - just some very useful chemicals.

Re:Wait, what?

[camperdave]

1492...

Guy finds previously unknown land and peoples. No need to follow up.

Guy with terrific PR connections finds "previously unknown land", if you don't count the Vikings, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Polynesians, etc.

Re:Wait, what?

[gstoddart]

if you don't count the Vikings, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Polynesians, etc

Which, oddly enough, they never do.

Much of history boils down to "the world was invented by white Europeans because we wrote the history books".

People tend to downplay just how much stuff we actually knew even 2000 years ago and act like it wasn't there.

Re:Wait, what?

[chill]

You don't count the Vikings, Chinese, etc. because they didn't do anything with the discovery. Their "knowledge" of the Americas didn't translate to anything that noticeably impacted history or civilization either there (Norway, China, etc.) or here (North America).

The occasional potsherd or remnants of an abandoned village don't amount to anything. All of them left the equivalent of "Kilroy was here" marks and nothing more.

Columbus' "discovery" shook the world.