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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.
What, you mean concrete evidence of an Intelligent Designer?
Love,
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Definitive proof that the building blocks of life were purposefully placed here by a space alien :-)
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Ingredients for bleu cheese found in my bathroom... but that doesn't mean it is bleu cheese or that I'd want to eat it even if it were.
I'd say this would definitely incresase the probability of the drake equation resulting in a non-zero answer. Complex organic molecule formation is one of the biggies that you need for development of life.
I just thought of something while looking at the graphic -- what if RNA and DNA originally assemble in the pre-planetary cloud and hang around, falling into condensing planets and so forth?
I think the current popular theory, IIRC, is that RNA molecules somehow stack up in a tidal pool, where they are gently rocked back and forth. Some correct me please.
So how hard would it be to get DNA to link up in microgravity? Sure, there's more radiation around to blast things apart, but that might be a good thing -- you could get molecules you might not get otherwise without the blowing apart. Also, in microgravity, molecules can float around in 3 dimensions.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
" Shouldn't it be where water exists on the borderline between gas and solid?"
No. Liquid water doesn't exist at the temp and pressure where there is a borderline between gas and solid, you get direct sublimation from solid to gas under those conditions -- unless you happen to be at exactly the triple point.
Conversion between gas and liquid would help in the formation of life precursors, since the phase changes could help concentrate compounds in acqueous solution, resulting in greater rates of reaction. I'm sure there are other reasons why acqueous phase changes would help formation of complex organic molecules.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Life is not the presence of particular molecules. Life is the plan by which the molecules are constructed into a living organism. Molecules without the plan by which they operate are no different than computer hardware without any software installed on it. Finding hydrogen cyanide and acetylene present around another star is more a comment on the improving ability to detect molecules at a distance than it is on the presence of the 'building blocks of life.' It would have been much more remarkable if they had NOT found those substances since they are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen which we would expect to be ubiquitous in the universe, based on our present knowledge. Claiming to have found the 'building blocks of life' around another star is just hype to help pump up the budget for next years work.
To inhabitants of the T'nsha'grlsk galaxy this is hardly surprising. Scattered across their saucier-pan-shaped galaxy are planets containing the ingredients for Fetucinni Alfredo, Pork Tenderloin, Chicken Cacciatore, and in what will most likely result in a lawsuit should humans develop interstellar space travel, the McRib.
When asked about the ingredients for Life, Ss's'krpwjdnq waved his third-dimension-bound tentacles wildly and secreted an information packed protein strand. While there is no English equivalent for his communique, a rough translation would be "Given the chance to eat a human, I would."
Carbon-14 (the radioactive isotope of carbon used in carbon dating) is continuously generated on Earth at a fairly constant rate, by the interaction of neutrons (from cosmic rays) with nitrogen (and occasionally oxygen and carbon) atoms. So, 'new' carbon-14 atoms are being made all the time.
:)
Because it has a relatively constant abundance in nature, living things should also maintain the same ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in their tissues... until they die, at which point they're no longer taking in new carbon from the environment. Then the carbon-14 starts to decay (with a half-life of ~5700 years), but the carbon-12, which is stable, remains. Measuring this ratio can give an approximation of the length of time since the creature died.
The carbon-12 in your body is stable, and could very well pre-date the solar system. Carbon-14 doesn't hang around very long, in astronomical timescales.
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