Icy Particles Of Space May Have Been The Ingredients For Life On
Earth Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
In an effort to better understand how life started on Earth,
researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
California are cooking up icy concoctions of organisms (carbon-
bearing molecules) then zapping them with lasers. The JPL crew’s
experiments also provide the first direct look at the organic
chemistry that takes place in the chilly regions of our solar
system, and even chillier reaches between stars. Scientists
theorize that the basic ingredients of life began their journey
to Earth on icy particles from these frigid regions of space.
These icy organisms would have found their way into comets and
asteroids, and have been carried around the solar system, some
making their way to Earth, administering a dose of “prebiotic”
ingredients to jump-start life on the third rock from the sun.
While the researchers do not have a clear answer on how icy
organisms become slime m