Did life on Earth come from space? The scientific evidence is mounting. A new report suggests amino acids, the chemical building blocks necessary for life as we know it, may be scattered throughout the solar system, created when high-speed comets smacked into the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and rocky planets like our very own Earth. "Amino acids have very basic starting materials -- you need some kind of carbon source like methane or carbon dioxide, a nitrogen source like ammonia, and water ice," said Nir Goldman, a physical chemist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and a co-author of the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. "Comets have all these things in abundance." Since 2006, Goldman has been working on a theory known as shock synthesis. It predicts that when a comet slams into another rocky or icy body, the heat and pressure from the impact cause the chemical bonds in the comet's head to break apart while new bonds form. "Amino acids are just one of the things that are formed, but they are almost guaranteed to form," he said. Goldman tested his theory using elaborate computer models. Then a team of scientists put shock synthesis to test in the lab. Read more http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-comet-impact-life-20130916,0,4729019.story
