Did Life on Earth Hitch a Ride on a Comet? Study May Have Answer
Researchers say only one in a million comet impacts could have delivered enough hydrogen cyanide to early Earth, making asteroids and Earth-based sources likelier.
- Researchers reported in Scientific Reports that comets rarely delivered prebiotic molecules to Earth billions of years ago, challenging long-standing theories about life's origins.
- Historically, scientists viewed comets as "giant space snowballs" that provided carbon and nitrogen for life, acting as a "get-out-of-jail-free card" for planetary seeding.
- Cambridge astronomer Richard Anslow led a team using computer simulations to determine that comets must be larger than 100 meters and travel slowly for fragile molecules like HCN to survive impact.
- Alternative sources like asteroids and volcanoes may have provided life's building blocks instead, and planetary geologist Gordon Osinski of Western University said the study will "definitely make people think twice about comets being the originator for the delivery of organics."
- Researchers identified "peas in a pod" systems, where planets orbit closely together, as potential sites where comets could be "bounced" between orbits and slowed enough to deliver intact prebiotic molecules.
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18 Articles
Illustration shows how the Earth may have been billions of years ago, when comet impacts are pointed out as a possible source of molecules linked to the origin of life. Peter Sawyer/Smithsonian Institution An ancient hypothesis about the origin of life on Earth sustains that comets may have brought from space important molecules to the emergence of the first organisms. A new study, however, indicates that at least one of the proposed mechanisms …
Organic compounds discovered on comets reinforced the assumption that the chunks of ice could once have brought building blocks of life to Earth. However, a new study estimates that this is extremely unlikely. Other celestial bodies could have been better suited for this.
The speed of impacts and the destruction of essential molecules would have turned their delivery into an exceptional event, but there's an alternative... Mars.
Writing Science, 28 Oct (EFE).- What if comets were not the ones that contributed and planted the basic molecular components for life on Earth? Because a new study led by Cambridge University challenges that theory and maintains that the arrival of essential elements could have been an isolated coincidence, almost [...] The entry What if it wasn't the comets that planted life on Earth? was first published in HolaNews.
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