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 ...
Only if you’re Tom Cruise.
No, it began at the Tiki Hut!
....almost Friday?
The problem with the whole “life from space” is that cosmic radiation rapidly destroys complex chemical chains.
Wickramasinghe worked with Sir Fred Hoyle, he’s worked in this theoretical field for quite a while now.
I fear there’s little chance of discovering protolife or a bacterium in a comet, though. A theory it shall remain.
Likely, yes. Life exists inside rock, originated inside rock, and that would include any rocky planet or other rocky celestial body that contains some hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon along with other elements, IOW should be mineralized.
Might be one of those Navy surplus aluminum basses. If I tried that with my bass I would end with a pile of kindling.
Life began in the snot of an ancient and forgotten god and will end with the coming of the “great white hanky” of the apocalypse. Duh.
The "tards" are the ping list members - not necessarily the subject of the thread.
I am pretty sure my life began in a comet...
My dad owned a Ford Comet when he me my mother....hehehhe
Met....
no...it began on earth...
That Comet was a Merc , son.
Trying to dodge the whole God thing is a difficult business.
Panspermia.
Well, you know it wasn’t a term thought up by a feminist!
They would have called it the “Rape of the Innocent Universe”.
I kinda like it though, life in all it’s forms spreading across the cosmos, billions and billions and billions...
Sorry , it almost felt like I was channeling there for a second.
Dodge never made Comets.
Point Taken.....
Mercury, yes....
Later on, my aunt had a ‘75 For Maverick, similar (almost identical) to the Mercury comet.
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