Science Daily: First Discovery Of Life's Building Block In Comet.
ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2009) — NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.
"Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."
Quite a find, though I must admit that doesn't mean ALL "ingredients" came from comet impacts. However, whereever the evidence leads us, I'll be happy when we've found the origin of life. :)
ReplyDeleteFrankly, it surprises me that anyone is astonished by this. Space is full of complex chemistry. I won't be shocked if actual life itself is found free in space (though it would have to be quite hardy, beyond even the extremophilic bacteria we know).
ReplyDeleteJeffery,
ReplyDeleteDo you know that Fred Hoyle was deliberately passed over for the Nobel Prize and it was instead awarded to his assistant William Fowler?
"Would you not say to yourself, "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule." Of course you would . . . A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."
ReplyDeleteFred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November, 1981. pp. 8–12
While Nucleosynthesis is really important (and you're right, he should have gotten the Nobel), the man left his critical thinking at the door with this quote.
Jeffery,
ReplyDeleteYou say that because you're a fundamentalist and you don't accept the possibility that most people on this Earth accept.
Funny how you don't say Newton left his critical thinking at the door with his insane rants about divine intervention and the miracle of gravitation.
Funny how you don't say Newton left his critical thinking at the door with his insane rants about divine intervention and the miracle of gravitation.
ReplyDeleteI'm on record around here as to Newton's opinion on divine intervention, "fixed stars" and the "miracle" of gravitation.
Hoyle was wrong about Intelligent Design, Newton was wrong about "fixed stars."
Nothing funny about it. Try quoting me sometime.