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Man may have been born in outer space
Basic life ingredient found in comet's dust; early life forms could have been delivered to Earth: Scientists
LOS ANGELES: Strengthening the argument that life in the universe might be more common than previously thought, scientists have found traces of a key building block of biology in dust snatched from the tail of a comet.
Scientists at Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, have uncovered glycine, the simplest amino acid and a vital compound necessary for life, in a sample from the comet Wild 2, named for astronomer Paul Wild (pronounced Vild).
The sample was captured by National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Stardust spacecraft, which dropped it into the Utah desert in 2006.
Dr Jason Dworkin, a co-author of a paper outlining the discovery in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, said glycine was first detected a few months after the sample landed. The next two years, he said, were spent verifying the result.
Said Dr Jamie Elsila, a research scientist at Goddard and co-author of the research paper: 'By detecting glycine, we now know that comets could have delivered amino acids to the early Earth, contributing to the ingredients that life originated from.'
The idea that the ingredients for life were delivered to Earth from the nursery of space, rather than developing out of the Earth's original chemical soup, has been around for years. Amino acids previously have been discovered in meteorites. But this is the first time an amino acid has turned up in comet material.
'This is yet another piece of evidence that the ingredients for life are ubiquitous. These building blocks of life are everywhere,' said Dr Carl Pilcher, director of Nasa's Astrobiology Institute, which helped fund the research.
The Stardust spacecraft, managed jointly by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, was launched in 1999 on a 4.6-billion-km journey that made two loops around the Sun before meeting up five years later with Wild 2, which orbits between Mars and Jupiter.
Flying as close as 237km to the hamburger-shaped comet, Stardust passed through its tail of dust and gas.
At its closest approach, the craft deployed a tennis racket-shaped collector packed with a substance called aerogel, which harvested comet particles. The spacecraft then returned to Earth's orbit and jettisoned a capsule containing the sample. The capsule landed in Utah on Jan 15, 2006.
Professor Don Brownlee, a University of Washington astronomer who served as chief scientist on the Stardust mission, called the work 'a real tour de force technologically to make these measurements in such small samples'.
He said the result is exciting because it represents a second, very large source of life-giving material. He estimated that there are as many as a trillion comets in and around the solar system, many of them located in the chilly Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto, or in the Oort Cloud even farther out.
'There has been a huge question of where the pre-biotic compounds came from on Earth,' he added. 'Did they come from space? Or were they made here? Or maybe they came from both places.'
Just having the right materials is no guarantee that life will begin, of course, any more than leaving a hammer, nails and planks lying around will cause a barn to rise. Prof Brownlee pointed out that many of the 30,000 or so meteorites found on Earth bear traces of organic compounds, and there is also evidence that they were once warm and wet, all necessary conditions for life. Yet none of the meteorites has shown any evidence of life forms.
'They are all failed places where life could have arisen,' Prof Brownlee said.
LOS ANGELES TIMES, REUTERS
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I chose this article because the headline caught my eye. It intrigues me as the article states that building block of life of man exits almost everywhere out of space. This questions if life really started on Earth and not in outer space on other unknown planets or even comets as there are as many as a trillion comets in and around the solar system, many of them located in the chilly Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto, or in the Oort Cloud even farther out. But there is also another r argument saying that even if it has all the components needed for the birth of mankind, the parts are not necessarily combined together as the components are just left there untouched.

However, no signs of life form have been found on any of the samples found and is described as failed places where life could have arisen even if it is just a small organism and not man.
The new findings show that there is a high chance of other life forms existing elsewhere except for Earth life could exist in some other planet in another solar system as there are basic components of man all over the solar system and there might also be mankind somewhere else.