Conjuring up images from the movie “It came from Outer Space“, it turns out we may all be from space. Some of us are “spacier” than others. This news of finding the building blocks of life in a meteorite comes as a small surprise. I swear though I’m not related to anyone in Chico by by more than 17,000 AU.
Scientists have confirmed that the components of genetic material could have originated in a place other than Earth.
A recently published report explains how uracil and xanthine, two basic biological compounds, were found within a meteorite that landed in Australia.
The Murchinson Meteorite, more here
Here is the paper: “Extraterrestrial nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite”, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Sunday 15 June 2008 (Print publication)
A full copy of the research (HTML and PDF) can be downloaded at:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2008.03.026
Excerpt:
“They tested the meteorite material to determine whether the molecules came from the solar system or were a result of contamination when the meteorite landed on Earth. The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space. Materials formed on Earth consist of a lighter variety of carbon.”
Here is the full press release:
Imperial College News Release
For Immediate Release:
Friday 13 June 2008
Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on 15 June 2008.
The finding suggests that parts of the raw materials to make the first molecules of DNA and RNA may have come from the stars.
The scientists, from Europe and the USA, say that their research, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, provides evidence that life’s raw materials came from sources beyond the Earth.
The team discovered the molecules in rock fragments of the Murchison meteorite, which crashed in Australia in 1969.
They tested the meteorite material to determine whether the molecules came from the solar system or were a result of contamination when the meteorite landed on Earth.
The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space. Materials formed on Earth consist of a lighter variety of carbon.
Lead author Dr Zita Martins, of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, says that the research may provide another piece of evidence explaining the evolution of early life. She says:
“We believe early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoritic fragments for use in genetic coding which enabled them to pass on their successful features to subsequent generations.”
Between 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago large numbers of rocks similar to the Murchison meteorite rained down on Earth at the time when primitive life was forming. The heavy bombardment would have dropped large amounts of meteorite material to the surface on planets like Earth and Mars.
Co-author Professor Mark Sephton, also of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, believes this research is an important step in understanding how early life might have evolved. He added:
“Because meteorites represent left over materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components for life — including nucleobases — could be widespread in the cosmos. As more and more of life’s raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely.”
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We are born.
We will die.
In between we wonder why.
(Except in my case, when I’m eating a really good cake.)
Hey, maybe Fred and Chandra were right after all!
Interesting read, but I doubt the ideas behind it somewhat.
“Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
“The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
Albert Einstein
Another meteorite that is astoundingly important and collected correctly (by a non-scientist) is the Tagish Lake carbonaceous chondrite that fell in January 2000. It had the decency to fall on a Canadian Lake and pieces were found by local resident. He collected them in plastic bags and kept them frozen until turning them over to scientists.
Most carbonaceous chondrites don’t survive entry or become degraded quickly. This one retained much of its volatile chemicals and provided scientists a once in a lifetime chance to study such pristine materials.
No amino acids or nucleic acids, but a good collection of other organics. Including nicotinic acid. Who knew ET smokes?
http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/news_stories/news_detail.cfm?ID=44
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008LPI….39.1737H
“This universe may simply be a big crib.” Petri dish?
Panspermia: Its own origins and evolution
The idea that the seeds of life are ubiquitous throughout the cosmos goes back to Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher. In the 1800s, French chemist Louis Pasteur proposed that spontaneous generation of life could not have occurred on Earth. British physicist Lord Kelvin and others jumped on Pasteur’s bandwagon and suggested that life might have come from space.
Two leading researchers carry the bulk of the panspermia torch. The renowned Sir Fred Hoyle, known for his studies of star structure and the origin of the chemical elements in stars, has worked with Chandra Wickramasinghe over the past three decades to pioneer the modern theory of panspermia.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
To all who have used the argument “we don’t see any” or words to that effect:
We have only been able to really “see” about 60 or 70 light years out. Our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across. There are millions of galaxies in the known Universe. How egotisical to say we “Know”. I do believe there is plenty of life out there, however, I absolutely reject the idea we have or are being visited by anyone or anything intelligent that is not from Earth. Perhaps we are simply the top dogs so far, the most advanced species ever. Perhaps it is just by the happenstance of a lucky spot in a solar system that has a lucky spot in the galaxy which has allowed us to get this far in our evolution. Then again, only a species evolving on a planet that happens to have a lucky spot in a solar system that has a lucky spot in the galaxy would be able to evolve enough to even ask the question.
I’ve always favored the panspermia idea, if only because it makes the chance of meeting aliens built roughly like ourselves a lot more likely. Since I’m a lover of sci-fi stories this has always had it’s attractions.
I did read one novel which postulated that life evolved as organised energy shortly after the big bang. Considering that all the space, time and energy in the universe was a lot more squashed together then it seemed plausible enough to me.
Well, to some extend I believe that people are going to read more into this than needs to be. Yes, some forms of these chemicals could have formed in space. They could also form here from the same chemical building blocks once conditions were right for their formation. Yes, these in the meteorite might have formed before conditions were right here, but that didn’t mean that the chemicals that exist here were originally delivered from space and didn’t form here later when conditions for formation were better.
So if you have a stone (meteorite) with these chemicals locked up inside, it doesn’t immediately follow that these chemicals would “get loose” and cause life to spring up. I think it just means that certain chemicals can be created in all sorts of places, Earth included. And in and of themselves, these chemicals do not create life, they are simply some of the building blocks that evolved to be used in that process. And if follows that the building blocks would be rather easily created because if it was difficult, life probably wouldn’t have formed.
I believe that anywhere you have a duplication of all the miracles that have led to life on earth … the right gravity, a stable orbit, a stable star in a location with little cosmic radiation free from recent novae, the right amount of water, the right mix of elements, the right amount of volcanism to cycle things through anew and provide fresh raw materials, the right atmospheric content, the right temperature … life would probably be bound to develop. But there are so many things that had to be lined up just right to make life “catch” here, I do honestly believe that intelligent beings like ourselves are going to be exceedingly rare in this universe.
It could not have evolved around 1st generation stars as their planets would be only gas giants of hydrogen. It took Earth 4 billion years to evolve “intelligent” life and our star has less than a half billion years left of conditions where earth can support life. As the sun goes hotter and the earth’s core cools and volcanism stops, the oceans will outgass, the CO2 will be bound up in products of erosion and the Earth will die long before the Sun does. So you need stable conditions suitable for life for about 4 billion years if our experience is typical. We might well be alone in the universe.
It constantly amazes me how we are actually the universe being curious about itself.
It seems reasonable to me considering how much meteorite activity over the ages that components of these objects could have contributed to the building blocks of life.
where can we see the daily satellite temperature updates? i have not figured that out.
REPLY: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
I can’t accept the argument that if we can’t explain something God must exist. We might as well say: we can’t explain something, therefore the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.
Also probabilities encompass both stochastic processes and the analysts ignorance of the true causal mechanism. So life appears unlikely to us; that may be because it is unlikely, or because we are ignorant of the causal processes that bring it about.
But to me, the most interesting thing about this meteorite is that it makes it much less likely that DNA and RNA are exclusive to Earth. Therefore, extra-terrestial life is much more likely than previously thought.
Bayesians, start your engines!
Retired engineer,
the experiment you speak of is problematic in a couple of ways. First, the product of the zapping has to be immediately removed from the area where it is produced or it will break down into its constituents. Specifically he used a trap with cold water to catch the amino acids so that they wouldn’t be broken down by subsequent zapping or succeeding chemical reactions!! Probably not a very good replication of the conditions of the early earth.
The other issue with this experiment is much more important, and applies to all others that have been done. It is that they have been unable to create optical isomers of one type.
Optical isomers come in L-amino (left) or D-amino (right) types and are formed in equal proportions (racemic) by the current synthesis experiments. Earth biology is comprised of almost exclusively L-amino types.
In genetics and other biological experiments, the researchers use biologically produced optical isomers to produce MORE biological (exclusively left or right) optical isomers. We are still at the Life=Life Synthetic=No Life stage.
Of course, I always find it interesting how scientists look at meteorites and automatically ASSUME they have a non-earth source. With the huge collisions, that are pretty well proven, the earth would have lost quite a bit of material. Some of them may have impacted other bodies in the Solar System. Some of it would have gone into orbits which would eventually re-impact!!! Maybe these rocks are just coming home!! 8>)
“Some of it would have gone into orbits which would eventually re-impact!!! Maybe these rocks are just coming home!! ” KuhnKat,
If life (or its remnants) is found on Mars or elsewhere in the Solar System, I would bet that it turns out to be related to life on earth. The current theory
seems to be:
water + energy source + organic molecules + a wee bit of time = life.
By all means, let’s go to Europa and find out.
Hi Steve,
Why so we need to go to Europa? If the theory is true, we should see the process of extremely primitive life evolving repeated on earth – over and over again.
I suspect if that was happening, we would have heard about it.
Patrick,
Darwin said something about existing life not allowing other life to get started.
Still we could sterilize a huge vat of amino acids and wait a while. Be we would have to allow it a few million years or so depending on the vat size. Europa has been sitting there for who knows how long with oceans of water.
“I suspect if that was happening, we would have heard about it.” Patrick
LOL! You can bet your sweet bippy we would have heard about it!
They would still be dancing (naked) in the streets.
Jack Sarfatti is a theoretical physicist, studied with Bohm and Feynman and Bethe, is now working on an extension to standard quantum mechanics/relativity:
Fred Hoyle predicted this. He also correctly predicted a key nuclear resonance in carbon 12 without which our life form is not possible
But no resonance was known in carbon-12! Enter Fred Hoyle. Hoyle calculated the temperature inside a large star to be about 100 million degrees and worked out how much kinetic energy this would give to the particles rushing around in the star’s atmosphere. Knowing the masses of both beryllium-8 and the alpha particle, he was able to predict that there must be an excited state at an energy of 7.6 million electron volts in the nucleus carbon-12. His certainty of the existence of this state was based on what we now call the ‘Anthropic Principle’ – since he, Fred Hoyle, a life form based upon carbon molecules, existed, then the resonance must also exist to create the carbon. A team at Cal. Tech. led by Willy Fowler ( later a Nobel Prize winner) began the search for the mysterious resonant state in carbon-12, and discovered it – just a few percent above Hoyle’s prediction. To this day, the 7.6MeV state in carbon-12 is known as the ‘Hoyle resonance’, and Hoyle’s prediction of its existence is possibly the only proven example of a scientific prediction using the ‘Anthropic Principle’.
http://www.np.ph.bham.ac.uk/research/anthropic.htm
Hoyle, using Wheeler-Feynman also showed that advanced light waves back from a perfect future absorber cause the present virtual photon zero point energy responsible for spontaneous down transitions of electric charges releasing real photons ~ “jerk” radiation reaction term ~ time derivative of the charge’s acceleration.
This is the key to understanding the anti-gravitating dark energy since the future de Sitter horizon is Wheeler & Feynman’s perfect future absorber.
– Show quoted text –
Just realized I didn’t include any background info on the scientist and his experiment:
Miller Urey Experiment 1953
http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/miller_urey_experiment.html
Here is an article on life and optical isomers:
http://www.libertyparkusafd.org/lp/Paley/Papers/2004/Chirality%20and%20DNA.htm
David,
Wasn’t it Hoyle that also deduced, using the same principle, that there must be also something different about the energy state of O16 that made it difficult for C12 and an alpha particle to stay together? If not, most C12 would have become O16 and we wouldn’t be here.
KuhnKat,
I enjoyed the link on chirality. Thanks
[…] at Watts Up With That? some pretty cool stuff found in a […]
I am a simple farmer who at times ponders creationism V darwinism. But surely in this day and age why cant we build a super computer that is linked to all of the alledged building blocks of life, a mix master and a microwave oven and then load a program that says mix randomly until something happens?
“This is the key to understanding the anti-gravitating dark energy since the future de Sitter horizon is Wheeler & Feynman’s perfect future absorber.”
My brain is full, can I have my nappy now?
New info:
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-science/20080616/SCIENCE-SPACE-PLANETS-DC/
Just because we can’t detect things doesn’t mean they don’t exist.