Does Prebiotic Material Exist In Outer Space?

Hi everyone. There is another thread that is great for background on the subject which can be found here .

Please read through that post which will bring you up to speed, well worth it.

My post deals with...

a band in the infrared range that serves to track the presence of organic material rich in oxygen and nitrogen in the interstellar dust grains

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In other words this discovery has been made and you can read the article here.

This is surely a step in the right direction as imagine how benificial it would be to be able to look for organic material in this way. Potential sites to explore, comets and other bodies open to scrutiny, all with the help of a telescope.

Of course it wont be any good to identify alien visitors to our planet but then again it might.

Alot of you will be aware of the red rain in India, if not read the origional ATS thread here.

And lately there was also new species of bacteria found in the upper atmosphere. Read more about that here
and here.
More information about that bacteria here.

Back to the main point, this be used to look for evidence of Exogenesis or Panspermia which are easy to confuse. I myself lean more towards exogenesis because this seems to be the more logical to me and I state that that is my opinion.

I am not saying that red rain is alien!! or that the bacteria is alien!! but rather that the locations where we find life or the organic material mentioned before are more prolific than estimated and that this new discovery could lead to an explosion in the understanding and varity of what we think is possible.

Just wanted to bring this to your attention guys. Thanks again.

Good thread, and one of my favorite topics.

I don't think there's any doubt that the basic building blocks for life exist in space. The evidence is overwhelming, from the presence of amino acids being detected in cosmic gas clouds, to them being found in meteorites.

The bottom line is that you have these materials that come from space," says Steve Macko, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Macko refers specifically to eight of the amino acids found in a certain kind of meteorite – a carbonaceous chondrite. All eight amino acids are identical to those used by life on Earth. That could seem to point to a cosmic origin of these basic biological building blocks, says Macko. The case is bolstered by the fact that early Earth was bombarded with meteorites and the amino acid glycine has been detected on interstellar molecular clouds.

Source: sciencedaily.com

I am also fairly certain that life must exist elsewhere, if not almost everywhere that is habitable, but we have yet to see any conclusive evidence for this.

I'm not a big fan of the "red rain of Kerela", since I smell something fishy going on there. It's been years since the first samples, and I have yet to hear of any other independent researchers being given samples, which might confirm the Indian team's findings.

Also, if these "cells" came from space, why was this only a local phenomena? Things tend be spread out in space - dust, meteoroids... when earth encounters these things, they are encountered on a global scale, and everywhere gets some.

I think this is more likely to be some organism found within our atmosphere (or transported to the atmosphere via a tornado), or it could just be someone trying to make a name for themselves. I'll take it a bit more seriously when other researchers have managed to replicate the findings.

Here are a few more links on the subject:
The Interstellar Amino Acid Test
The Secret Life of Amino Acids
Collection of short articles from CCNet

Nice One. Thanks for the extra information. I will be posting more as come across it. The Red Rain might just be something swept up in bad weather I agree.

When the new process is put into practice I have a feeling that it will be a WTF moment for science and for lots of other people as the out come ( I predict) will be that the material that is prebiotic will be found almost everywhere.

While it may not be life they are the building blocks for life and if every planet in every star system is bombarded with these ingredients then does that not increase the probability of life springing up in these locations?

Life also seems very robust and hardy (not all life) but we still need to see how life began. Still this is a step in the right direction.