Building Blocks of DNA Confirmed In Meteorites

MistrX writes "Researchers announced that the components of DNA have now been confirmed to exist in extraterrestrial meteorites. A different team of scientists also discovered a number of molecules linked with a vital ancient biological process, adding weight to the idea that the earliest forms of life on Earth may have been made up in part from materials delivered to Earth from space. Past research had revealed a range of building blocks of life in meteorites, such as the amino acids that make up proteins. Space rocks just like these may have been a vital source of the organic compounds that gave rise to life on Earth."

Possible, but...

[Kupfernigk]

The anthropomorphic fallacy (we overestimate the probability of life-related thing because we are living and we are there to see it) has a counter-argument which runs "We live on a planet which originally had no life, and we are here. Life must arise spontaneously because the initial conditions of the universe did not admit of any life, and there is at least some (us). If it has arisen at least once (regardless of how it got here) and survived despite all the cosmic and other accidents to the Earth, whether it's asteroid collisions or becoming a snowball, life is fairly tough. Therefore, based on present knowledge, and our understanding of how big the Universe is, life is most likely fairly common".

People who argue that we are unique in a very large universe are in essence taking a position which at base is religious, not scientific. Science assumes that once we observe a phenomenon, if we reproduce the initial conditions it will recur. This has worked extremely well up till now, whereas the successive religious claims of uniqueness, beginning with the Earth at the centre of the universe, have all been exploded.