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March 28, 2012

New evidence that comets deposited building blocks of life on primordial Earth

New research reported in San Diego on March 27 at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) provides further support for the idea that comets bombarding Earth billions of years ago carried and deposited the key ingredients for life to spring up on the planet.

Jennifer G. Blank, Ph.D., who led the research team, described experiments that recreated with powerful laboratory "guns" and computer models the conditions that existed inside comets when these celestial objects hit Earth's atmosphere at almost 25,000 miles per hour and crashed down upon the surface. The research is part of a broader scientific effort to understand how amino acids and other ingredients for the first living things appeared on a planet that billions of years ago was barren and desolate. Amino acids make up proteins, which are the workhorses of all forms of life, ranging from microbes to people.

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