This may have opened the way for the emergence of life here

Mar 29, 2012 13:30 GMT  ·  By

I think it's funny how studies conducted lately are beginning to indicate that it may be possible that life never originated on Earth in the first place. In tune with those discoveries, a new study shows that amino acids can survive an impact between Earth and a comet.

Now that this has been demonstrated, it is safe to hypothesize that amino acids did not evolve on our planet form the primordial soup, but that they were brought here by comets in the early days of the solar system. In all fairness, things were pretty hectic back then, as far as cosmic impacts go.

What the experts behind this new work were especially interested in was figuring out whether amino acids, with their delicate structures, are able to withstand the enormous friction generated as a comet descends at great speed through Earth's atmosphere, Daily Galaxy reports.

“Our research shows that the building blocks of life could, indeed, have remained intact despite the tremendous shock wave and other violent conditions in a comet impact,” says Jennifer Blank, PhD, who is based at the NASA Ames Research Center, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute.