Saturday 14 June 2008

How Life Came to Earth

Or rather, how the precursor molecules definitely did - and do. This source arrived in Murchison, Australia on September 28th, 1969.

From Extraterrestrial nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite :

Carbon-rich meteorites, carbonaceous chondrites, contain many biologically relevant organic molecules and delivered prebiotic material to the young Earth. We present compound-specific carbon isotope data indicating that measured purine and pyrimidine compounds are indigenous components of the Murchison meteorite. Carbon isotope ratios for uracil and xanthine of δ13C = + 44.5‰ and + 37.7‰, respectively, indicate a non-terrestrial origin for these compounds. These new results demonstrate that organic compounds, which are components of the genetic code in modern biochemistry, were already present in the early solar system and may have played a key role in life's origin.

It has been known for some time that the precursors of DNA have been found in meteorites, but the possibility existed that they were just contamination from terrestrial sources hadn't been totally excluded - before now.

Examination of the precursors now shows that the ratio of isotopes of carbon in them isn't in the right ratio for the usual C12 or the rarer C14 isotopes found on Earth. The ratio contains far too much of the C13 isotope that's in the meteorites themselves. So the precursors of Life had to have been formed "out there" and brought here.

More on the subject in previous posts here, here, and here. The weakest form of the Panspermia hypothesis is now proven.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The song "Part 1 - The Bio Approach" by Australian heavy metal band "Alchemist" just came to mind :)

JJM

Battybattybats said...

I don't know that song but weren't they the ones who did the awesome heavy metal version of Eve of the War from Jeff Wayne's musical War of the Worlds album?

Christine said...

well this puts another nice gaper in Creationist theory...

Unknown said...

GOD give us such a wonderful brain to think..so everyone just think your self...weather a Carbon-rich meteorites, carbonaceous chondrites created human life...??