Posted on 08/21/2007 3:56:55 PM PDT by blam
Did life begin on comets?
18:17 17 August 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Hazel Muir
Clay particles seen in Comet Tempel 1 suggest comets once had warm, liquid interiors that could have spawned life, a controversial new study argues (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD)Tools
If you buy a lottery ticket this week, what are the odds that you'll win the grand prize then get struck by lightning as you pop open the champagne? Vanishingly small, but still much higher than the odds that life on Earth first evolved on our planet, according to an ardent proponent of the notion that life came from space.
Chandra Wickramasinghe from Cardiff University, UK, has long argued the case for cometary panspermia, the idea that comets are infected with primitive life forms and delivered life to the early Earth. That would explain why life on Earth arose so quickly after our planet formed around 4.5 billion years ago.
Wickramasinghe says the case has been bolstered by NASA's Deep Impact probe, which blasted Comet Tempel 1 with a projectile in July 2005. Scientists reported seeing clay particles spewing out from the interior.
Because clay needs liquid water to form, Wickramasinghe says that suggests comets once had warm, liquid interiors due to heating from radioactive isotopes. Clay is also a favoured catalyst for converting simple organic molecules into complex biopolymers on the early Earth.
Now, Wickramasinghe and his colleagues argue that the sheer volume of watery clay environments on comets makes them a far more likely site for the origin of life than our home planet.
The team estimates that the volume of these environments on the early Earth would have been about 10,000 cubic kilometres. A single 20-kilometre-wide comet could offer about a tenth of that, but when you include all the comets in
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
I have a 26 Ford Roadster in my garage. 100% restored.
I have a '68 GTX - coachworks - 440 super comando - factory air (one of the first)
(The '26 Ford. Not the garage.)
So, are we illegal immigrants here on earth?
Hardly more than a hypothesis
Bingo! You have hit the nail on the head!
Do you have any pictures?
Beautiful!
Religion: all life came from a rock !
She felt the best you could possibly hope for on a comet was some simple amino acids...other than that, the formation of even the simplest life would be impossible.
I have a 1924 Dodge Brothers business coupe in my garage. All original and being restored.
I think I was born under a mcushroom.
or Mitt Romney.
I fear theres little chance of discovering protolife or a bacterium in a comet, though. A theory it shall remain.”
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Sure thing, DBrow, and carriages without horses will never run. Fifty years from now (if all goes well) the legatees of Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle will eat comets for lunch.
Are you criticizing scientific speculation?
Yeah, life began on a distant comet and they used Arab made magic rugs to get to earth. Matter of fact, the only invention of the Arabs.
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