Ingredients of Life Found Around Sun-Like Star

smooth wombat writes "NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope has detected the basic organic building blocks of life in a ring orbiting in the 'habitable zone', that area where Earth orbits the Sun and where water exists on the borderline between gas and liquid, in a nearby stellar nursery. When acetylene and hydrogen cyanide combine with water they form adenine, one of the four bases of DNA. The detection supports the widely held theory that many of the molecular building blocks of life were present in the solar system even before planets formed, thus assisting the initial formation of complex organic molecules and the start of life itself." Though it was a little shakier than this observation, we've discussed the possibility of life elsewhere in the galaxy before.

Comments

Re:DNA in space?

[Otter]

Turns out the number of stars likely to have planets in the habital zone overwhelmed the probability by about 10,000 planets likely to have life of some form.

That's precisely my point -- once you're in the realm of multiplying an insanely large number pulled out of your ass by an insanely small number pulled out of your ass, it's arguably irrelevant that the number the OP is pulling out of his ass is even smaller.

Occam's Razor went by the boards long ago on this front, for the reasons you say.