Life On Saturn and Jupiter Moons ?

A Portuguese Scientist on astrobiology, Dr Zita Martins and her team, working at the Imperial College of London says it`s possible after this experiment that simulated a 15,000mph collision and found that the amino acids were created in the searing heat and pressure of the impact.

London - The origins of life on Earth have mystified and fascinated scientists for centuries. Now, researchers believe they have added a vital piece to the jigsaw with the discovery that, under certain circumstances, collisions between icy comets and planets produce amino acids, the basic building blocks of life.

The team from Imperial College London, the University of Kent and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory simulated a 15 000mph collision and found that the amino acids were created in the searing heat and pressure of the impact, from a mixture of more basic substances found on comets, including ammonia, carbon dioxide and methanol, a form of alcohol.

The discovery also has implications for the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Ice on the surfaces of Enceladus and Europa, the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter respectively, could provide the perfect conditions for producing amino acids from meteor impacts.

In a paper published online by Nature Geoscience on Sunday, the researchers said their findings “suggest a pathway for the synthetic production of the components of proteins within our solar system, and thus a potential pathway towards life through icy impacts”.

Dr Zita Martins of Imperial College London said they had tried a range of different mixtures during the near four-year project before getting positive results.

“I'm not going to say it was a eureka moment, but I was extremely happy,” she said.

Earth was bombarded by comets and meteorites between 4.5 billion and 3.8 billion years ago and life is thought to have originated about 3.5 billion years ago.

Dr Martins said the next steps in the origin of life remained “one of the big questions” in science. - The Independent

The discovery also has implications for the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Ice on the surfaces of Enceladus and Europa, the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter respectively, could provide the perfect conditions for producing amino acids from meteor impacts.

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Another source here:
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This is really good news and I'm surprised that work like this was not previously considered as possible and explored.


This basically means any comet just by sheer existence, hitting the right planet at the right speed could create such basic fundamental building blocks for life. Astounding.

Does point toward "the universe is an experiment into the creation of life through random parameters", makes me think the universe is an intelligent experiment to indirectly create life.

Interesting article.. So maybe another piece of the jigsaw puzzle of our origins has been found. Slowly but surely the pieces are falling into place. It's good they are making progress in this line of research.

reply to post by AQ6666


Personally I think their is a huge possibility that there is life on every planet. It may not be intelligent, visible to the human eye or even able to do anything, but I think that the universe is pretty much alive.

Thanks for the article

n00bUK
reply to post by AQ6666

 

Personally I think their is a huge possibility that there is life on every planet. It may not be intelligent, visible to the human eye or even able to do anything, but I think that the universe is pretty much alive.

Thanks for the article

I've pondered this possibility myself. We're looking for life, and it's everywhere we look. We're just not seeing it for what it is.

It has been postulated that life could exist on Europa, dependant upon its internal structure. If it is subject to large tidal heating it is possible that there can be liquid water under the frozen skin on the surface. This combined with extreme events such as comets hitting has always been on the table.

It is great that the process of producing the building blocks of life has been shown to be possible by this method.

When people say "Oh i am surprised that this hasn't been done before" Well i am not, and its not though lack of wanting to try, It is that simulating the extreme event like that, with the right conditions in the lab will be extremely hard.