Vitamins from Space! B3 Found in Meteorites

An essential nutrient for life on Earth also cooks up in space, a new study finds.

While scientists aren't yet sure of the exact recipe, they think radiation-blasted ice powered the chemical reactions that produced vitamin B3, or niacin, early in the solar system's history. A stew of dust and ice created key molecules for life in this planetary kitchen, which all later clumped into asteroids and comets, suggests the new study, published April 13 in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

Some researchers think impacts on early Earth could have delivered chemicals essential for life, such as amino acids and vitamins like niacin. Today, niacin isn't made by the human body, and must be consumed in the diet.

"Vitamin B3 is essential to metabolism and likely very ancient in origin," lead study author Karen Smith of Pennsylvania State University said in a statement.

Smith and her co-authors discovered vitamin B3 in eight carbon-rich meteorites. (When fragments of an asteroid fall to Earth, they're called meteorites.) The meteorites are all CM-2 carbonaceous chondrites, one of the most common meteorite types found on Earth.

www.richarddawkins.net...#

a reply to: Agartha

The more we analyze planetary bodies the more the evidence leads to panspermia.

Or maybe life is so common all it needs to thrive is water and sufficient sunlight... Like any good plant on earth.

a reply to: solomons path

Exactly what I thought....there's got to be life somewhere else.

I get all my vitamins from eating mummy dust.

This reminds me to start taking niacin tabs again. I love the ones that give the itchy rash (seriously like them), and if someone hasn't taken those before it's lol time when they come to you all scared and freaking out.

But the stuff is in meteorites, hmmmmmm, as old as the solar system!

a reply to: Aleister

I have never taken niacin tablets......and after your post I don't think I ever will! lol

Regarding the meteorite vitamins........I am really excited about this discovery cause it may mean that our 'creator' was a big rock.

a reply to: Agartha

No, the flushing one is really fun. At least I like it. But you can get niacin tablets with no-flushing (boring) and I think they are as potent and healthy, although I'm not sure. I know the scientologists are all ga-ga over niacin, and use it in abundance. Ron Hubbard said that when he first was testing it on people in the 1950s that the flush would come out in the shape of swimsuits (the swimsuit outline would be white while the rest of the body would flush red) but that after the a-bomb and nuclear bomb testing started the entire body would flush. He said that it healed and/or removed radiation damage from the body.

But I think all it does is act as an anti-histamine, and that's what the flushing does. I want some right now! Anyway, healthy in any form, and niacin, from everything I've studied about it, is very healthy to take on a regular basis (I've just had my attention off of it for several years, so stopped taking it.)

a reply to: Aleister

I also like the flushing one. Some say the no-flush B3 isn't worth taking, who knows...

originally posted by: samsamm9
a reply to: Aleister

I also like the flushing one. Some say the no-flush B3 isn't worth taking, who knows...

Yes, I can't understand why some vitamin sellers would remove one of the main effects of the megadose vitamin. I had one guy take one and he came semi-pounding on my door an hour later totally red, asking "What did you do to me??" I lol lol (he wasn't really angry, but had never been red before). Again, Hubbard said it healed past sunburns, and much of the sunburn comes out with high doses. It's also used when someone has a bad reaction to things like, ah, .....gotta go.

a reply to: Agartha

Most people don't need extra B3 & I've been told not to take it if you don't need it.

back to the article:
I saw this on science daily & I thought this was pretty cool. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of life came from space.
I had heard an episode of Quirks & Quarks on CBC Radio & they were interviewing a scientist who is studying the possibility of life being carried around on meteors & landing on another planet. It was really interesting, I know I didn't make it sound that way :p

a reply to: knoledgeispower

I told a couple of people yesterday about it, all excited cause this could be another step to finally discovering how life was made......but hearing 'rock' and 'B3' didn't excite them and were looking at me like I'm mad.....I hang out with the wrong people, I'm telling you! lol

Back to the topic, like Solomons path said above, maybe this could prove panspermia was the creator of life.

Well, technically, isn't everything from space? I mean, all the minerals and elements that make up the Earth and all living things on it were free floating in the universe billions of years ago. This seems to be more a confirmation of something that we already new.