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Genetic Building Blocks Found In Meteorite
FiReaNGeL writes to tell us scientists have confirmed that the components of genetic material could have originated in a place other than Earth. A recently published report explains how uracil and xanthine, two basic biological compounds, were found within a meteorite that landed in Australia. From Imperial College London:
"They tested the meteorite material to determine whether the molecules came from the solar system or were a result of contamination when the meteorite landed on Earth. The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space. Materials formed on Earth consist of a lighter variety of carbon."
I always thought of the idea of life arriving on the planet, rather unlikely. It seems counter intuitive. But, I suppose, with quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the whole earth is not flat thing, then I guess given enough evidence anything could be true, regardless of its ridiculousness.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space. Materials formed on Earth consist of a lighter variety of carbon.
What are they talking about? Heavy carbon? Is that just a non-technical way of referring to an isotope? No, I didn't RTFA.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
but not as we know it
I assume they mean a heavier isotope of carbon, but it's not too clear. Aren't ALL isotopes from space originally, anyhow? And which isotope of carbon are they talking about, anyhow?
Somehow, though, it makes me think about this story.
I, for one, welcome our new space overweights.
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
How much would that bee in Al Gore Carbon Credits? like double right?
/looks in wallet
The X files wasn't a documentary.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Looks like the Flying Spaghetti Monster has kidney stones.
a meteorite that landed in Australia...
landed you say? fascinating indeed.
I'm an American and I'm reasonably-sure that Jesus never existed.
Of course, I'm posting AC because I'm also reasonably-sure I will be modded-down for such belief.
Of course that would be silly. The living cells trapped inside the meteorite would have been baked into the material these researchers found. It's the light fluffy life forms on the exterior of the meteorite that would have been brushed off the surface of the meteorite on first contact with the atmosphere and drift gently down to the nutrient rich sea that covers most of our planet. There these hypothetic organisms would breed and diversify until they filled every sea, covered every continent and dwelled deep within the crust.
Eventually a form would evolve, such as a lichen or mold, that bred with colonies so small and potentially electrostatically charged by sunlight that they might rise to the highest reaches of the atmosphere - to be scooped up by passing meteors on their way to the unknown depths of space. Perhaps they might by a fluke of trajectory be thrown clear of the solar system altogether. Frozen in the cold of space these breeding colonies might last millions of years. The vast majority of these would wander 'twixt the stars eternally, finding no place they might rest or fall on a hostile environment and die. Given enough of them, though -- perhaps millions an hour for a billion years -- some few might land someplace they can start anew.
It's called panspermia
Help stamp out iliturcy.
was the title of a book by British astronomer Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe and when it made this same sort of claim it was laughed off as a crackpot theory.
Guess they're being proven to have been right all those years ago... imjussayinisall
Move along now, nothing to see here! Go on!
Note to all superhero aspirants, please watch out for black symbiotes following you home.
But he historically did and many people say he still does. en.wikipedia/wiki/Jesus.
I'm just saying.and the RIAA needs protection from these evil music thieves.
group think much?
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That's what *you* think.
Since we have not been able to spontaneously synthesis life from components after decades of research. This event seems highly improbable on the Earth (not impossible). However, in the huge solar system sized hydrocarbon Nebula found in Space, it's seems more probable that somewhere, sometime, a hydrocarbon molecule developed and once it was able to reproduce, it spread throughout the gas cloud. A passing comet would pick up and carry the molecule . The rest is history. Ultimately, I think it is statistically more likely that complex reproducing hydrocarbons formed in infinite space rather than here on a hostile volcanic earth.
More specifically, that's what *they* want you to think.
How much do people get paid to do this stuff? And how do I get in? I want to be lobbying on behalf of the lesser of evils, though...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To many people the term 'skeptic' has come to mean someone who disagrees, logic and training don't come into it. However skepticisim is an integral part of science and every scientist worth their salt practices skepticisim on their OWN ideas before using it to attack the ideas of others. The term the GP was looking for is 'psuedo-skeptics', ie: a person who fails to be skeptical of what they themselves 'know' and does not entertain criticisim. The worst kind of 'skeptic' is a denier, ie: someone who is willfully ignorant.
... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstitions and darkness."
Personally I am skeptical that any individual fits neatly into one category althogh I do agree fundamentalist nut jobs are an 'edge case'.
Carl Sagan's book on the subject is a great read and can speak for itself...
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grand children's time
OTOH, a skeptic might argue that Sagan's forboding is, and always has been, the status-quo.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Actually, I'd argue that it's both rather expectable _and_ at the same time meaningless.
The basic nucleotides and aminoacids can be formed rather quickly even in a retort in the lab, given the right conditions (similar to those of primal Earth). But even that is somewhat misleading: really they just need a lot of energy. Carbon and nitrogen just tend to do that, and we're talking simple building blocks, not a whole ribosome.
What took an awfully long time is those actually becoming _life_. I.e., those assembling, by sheer chance, in a self-replicating configuration.
Really, there's nothing special about finding isolated aminoacids or nucleotides. They're not yet life, they're the Lego blocks that actual life is made of. Aminoacids are not a miracle by themselves, but in the fact that they can be assembled in proteins that can react with any chemical you wish. Or produce another chemical that reacts with it. Including assemble other proteins. Nucleotides are even more meaningless by themselves. They can form a RNA strand, which is what the first and simplest life used. But the RNA strand does nothing whatsoever by itself. It needs some proteins that (A) replicate it, and (B) translate it to other proteins, before it can count as life.
The "miracle" isn't when you have aminoacids and nucleotides. It's when you have at least some kind of RNA replicase and some kind of a ribosome.
So basically "ZOMG, we found a nucleotide on a meteorite" is simultaneously:
1. not that surprising, since really they form anywhere.
2. rather meaningless for life on Earth, in that we have plenty of proof that they formed withing minutes on Earth too, with the conditions back then. So a couple of those molecules maybe came on a meteorite too. Big deal, compared to the whole billions of tons of them forming right here.
3. rather unlikely as a source of life on Earth. Sooner or later those molecules break down. They don't last for ever. And we're not talking self-replicating life, but some building blocks which still needed to combine into a configuration that can be called "life", by sheer chance. That means lots and lots of them, and lots and lots of time. It's kinda absurd to assume that meteorites kept bringing billions of tons of them, for billions of years, until they finally recombined into some kind of ribosome.
4. it at best brings some extra insight into it all. If they're as easy to form as to even exist in meteorites, well, it just makes it easier to believe that we had a lot here too. In fact, maybe we had them earlier than we thought, as Earth itself formed out of dust which coalesced into meteorite, which coalesced into a planet. The last one captured was the one that ejected a chunk of Earth and created the Moon. So maybe we had some building blocks before Earth even formed. It also means we can expect almost any planet anywhere to have _some_ of the building blocks, and evolve life, if the conditions and timing are right.
But again, not an awful lot of insight that we didn't already have anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
the so called hostile temperatures on earth are nothing compared to the hostility of the environment in space.
massive radiation, shockwaves, coronal mass ejections, MASSIVE extremes of heat and cold, and very importantly, the tendency for water to remain in a vaporous or solid form rather than liquid because of the lack of pressure.
Not to say the first dna fragments, amino acids, or single celled life forms could not have come from space, but they had to develop on some body with enough gravity and atmospheric pressure to host some liquid water water.
This characteristic need for liquid water is too fundamental to have simply arisen after this life came to earth.
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Since we have not been able to spontaneously synthesis life from components after decades of research. This event seems highly improbable on the Earth
A hundred jars in a lab for 30 years is hardly comparable to the entire surface of the planet for hundreds of millions of years. I'm not disputing panspermia here, but just pointing out that the lab tests are completely lacking in comparable scaling.
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe so but it still doesn't prove evolution especially evolution being triggered by outer space chemical(s). These are just more assumptions about what could have happened but it doesn't prove that it did happen the way they wish it did. I'm sure there are many other logical conclusions that can be deduced from this finding (assuming no errors were done in the tests/calculations) that are likely in their own way. Which to believe? They seemed to have settled on the idea they want to be true but it's all still based on assumptions.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Carbon is the atom of choice to 90% of all electrons polled. The double helix has the ability to glide thu the fabric of space-time with the least amount of decay. Carbon wraps itself around consciousness.PHFFFFTTTTT
Not sure what "spontaneously" means, but man-made/synthetic life probably has been done already. If not, it'll be here soon. The first phase of Venter's three-step process, which he published last year, involved transplanting and "booting up" the genome of one species of bacterium into another. The remaining step is to combine the first two steps, then insert the new synthetic genome into a standard bacterium. Scientists said they expect the announcement of man-made life this year. [from Wired, 1/24/08]
I'm the poster to whom you responded.
What evidence can you provide that Jesus existed?
Reliable contemporaneous accounts of the existence of Jesus of Nazareth are scant at best. If he did all the things attributed to him in the New Testament, you can bet that there'd be more mention of him in secular history of the time.
Granted, there could have been a person named Jesus who was a radical rabbi and was persecuted. Doesn't mean he was the son of a god or born of a virgin or other such nonsense.
An admittedly crude statement I've made on occasion indicating we may someday be surprised to learn our entire Universe is someone else's Petri dish.
And if you considered the Universe as a biological system, it would make sense that genetic material could travel, to us, vast distances on a meteorite.
Life on other worlds could be remotely or closely related to life on Earth.
"Honey....your 9th x 10e47 cousin from Rigel is here! He brought the wives and kids. You know they don't like my cooking, so bring home some KFC."
If this holds up, I am dying to see how folks like my fundamentalist Christian sister deal with the fact we may be bacteria in the actual grand scheme of things.
I am my own gestalt.
[citation needed]
...scientists have confirmed that the components of genetic material could have originated in a place other than Earth. Let me fix that.
...scientists have confirmed that the components of genetic material could have existed in a place other than Earth./* No Comment */
I find it really, really disturbing that people labeled "scientist" continue to have a go at the outer space theories. Out of all PhD:s in science I have met and the topic has been brought up I have never met anyone who believed in actual life coming from outer space, or that extraterrestrial material in fact would have been needed on a primordial Earth in order to create life. That a US president was blatantly fooled into promoting that childish Mars rock theory from a decade ago still hurts my mind. Think Occam's Razor. Dig where you stand. Don't overdo it, son.
From http://www.snpp.com/episodes/BABF03
-----
The Simpsons make a shopping excursion to ShÃp, the place to go for modern Swedish furniture and accessories. A green end table catches Marge's eye, and she's impressed that those crazy Swedish furniture designers could invent such a far-out concept. Homer tests a bean-bag chair -- and it immediately swallows him up. He joins Captain McAllister, who fell victim to the same chair.
Luckily, Homer rejoins his family in time to look at assemble-it-yourself wall units. A costumed character that looks like an Allen wrench with arms and legs walks up.
Allen: You put it together yourself. All you need is me -- Allen
Wrench.
Homer: [giggles] He's named after what he is.
Bart: [knocking on the wrench] Cool costume.
Allen: [turns away from the rest of the family to face Bart, and
begins talking in a robotic tone]
It's not a costume. They found me inside a meteor.
Marge: Excuse me, where are your hamper lids?
Allen: [friendly] Hamper lids? Uh, third floor.
[turns to Bart again]
[robotic] Help, I need tungsten to live. [raises arms]
Tungsten!
[Bart flees]
-- "Eight Misbehavin'"
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
we are a virus.
I wonder how simple molecules these would be treated as by a chemist. That's the big question to me. Are they so simple that it's quite likely they'll both have appeared on Earth and in space? Because, in that case, this isn't really as impressive as it may seem. Just because they're used in DNA/RNA doesn't imply they're complex alone.
:)
Uracil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uracil
Xanthine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthine
As an amateur, they don't look too complex to me, but hey, what do I know...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The atmosphere of Venus is considerably more dense than Earth's. As is Saturn's, Jupiter's and Uranus'. The importance of the density of atmosphere is irrelevant. For every atmospheric density there is an insertion vector where a lifeform resident on a meteor could be brushed off and float gently down.
What's important is the hospitality to life and the flexibility of life. We know that life is ridiculously flexible. There are forms of life in volcanic vents on Earth that would find Venus a paradise beyond imagining. In the past most of the planets in our solar system have been hospitable to some form of life found on our planet. It's reasonable to expect that there is some form of life on Earth that might find the crushing pressures of a gas giant inviting. For all we know the Great Red Spots are actually a life form of some kind.
In short, "life finds a way." We can take it as a given that our solar system has been so thoroughly polluted by life that everywhere it could take root it did. It's an open question whether it first took root in our solar system on Earth or elsewhere. I'm for Mars, but that's just an opinion. We're infested with life and with this meteorite we have evidence we're not the only solar system to be so infested. It follows that life is as common elsewhere in our galaxy as it is here. That means that the panspermia theory is at least partly true -- in the one example that we know of it's possible that some form of life will cross the stars. In regards to life if it can be done, it will be done. Therefore all the planets in our galaxy that can support life similar to ours have life. This is a big discovery.
When we get to the planets around distant stars we will find life that we understand. Let's go!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Inserting a new genome into a bacterium is a far cry from mixing up some chemicals then watching as life spontaneously generates.
Streptococcus microbes found on the Surveyor was an accidental contamination after the parts were returned to the Earth.
http://www.kosmix.com/Health/Myth_of_Streptococcus_mitis_on_the_moon-Bacteria-Streptococcus_Pneumoniae-Bacteria-Streptococcus_Mitis/-od-definition_wiki_Myth__of__Streptococcus__mitis__on__the__moon-s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Streptococcus_mitis_on_the_moon
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Well, it would offer a solution to the Fermi Paradox, i.e. if even one civilization set out to colonize the galaxy they could do so in a surprisingly few millions of years - so where are they?
Answer: Aaahh-chooh!!! There's Waldo!
Unless someone finds an end-run around Relativity, interstellar travel is going to be slow, so the main motive behind colonization would be to spread your genome - and if you want self-replicating machines, why re-invent the wheel? (See Titan by Stephen Baxter).
Of course, the converse is that the Fermi Paradox arises from the false assumption that advanced civilizations would behave like "bacteria with spaceships" and "go exponential" (Greg Egan, Diaspora).
PS: its fun and stimulating to speculate about such things provided you don't get them confused with scientific truth. Hence I cite SF novels rather than papers in Nature!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I don't know how much they get paid, but based on empirical evidence on this forum, bashing Bush and Microsoft must be extremely well compensated.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
It depends what you mean by Jesus. If you mean 'Jesus the son of god who did a number of cool things such as walking on water, come back to life after being dead for a couple of days, change water into wine, etc' then I think this person did not exist. If by Jesus you mean 'a man who lived about 2000 years ago and was relatively well-known' then I think it is safe to say this person might have existed.
The problem is that many christians will see evidence of a historical 'mundane' Jesus as evidence of a divine Jesus.
Ben Stein just cried a little.
For really intelligent life, you'd need trimethylxanthine.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
While it does look a bit like astroturfing, the AC's right - Obama does plan (p15) to significantly cut NASA's funding to get money for his education plan.
It's stupid and shortsighted, and probably my biggest objection to Obama, but since McCain also wants to cut NASA's funding, and he's a social conservative, I'll still probably vote for Obama. Anyway, quasi-offtopic, I know, but it is relevant to whether we'll be out there in the future, looking for the sources of things like this.
Bobb9000 - raised by the wolves,
Oxford education as phrased by the wolves.
More seriously :
- lots of research has reached the result that, given the circumstances, these compounds combine *rather easily* (oligo nucleotide can appear spontaneously).
- the self-replication is a *built-in function* of nucleotide (you don't need to wait that to appear). once you manage to have a string of them, you basically have enough to kickstart life.
- the living organism then are only dependent of what evolutionary paths the basic replication machine managed to choose.
It's definitely a stretch to translate those findings into proof that life as we know it exist elsewhere. (For what we know the foreign replicating machine could have chosen a completely different path and not even look closely like something you could understand as life).
But given current knowledge, those finding are largely enough to presume that self-replicating nano-cabron-based-organic-machines can spontaneously form including elsewhere besides on earth.
The panspermia hypothesis could even gain some grounds.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Kinda gives a new "ewww" factor to concepts like a "primordial ooze".
8==8 Bones 8==8
the stereochem of the amino acids found in meteorites is important. Nearly all biological amino acids (except glycine) have a chiral component to them. for those who didn't have the wonderful pleasure of taking organic chemistry, stereochemistry refers to a molecule's physical orientation in space. given a sufficiently complex molecule, you can have different "versions" (enantiomers) of the exact same molecule that have the same physical properties, but are in fact distinct.
all amino acids made by biological sources on Earth are L enantiomers (L= left, referring to the fact that pure enantiomers rotate plane-polarized light to the left or right, depending on which enantiomer it is.) Some meteorites have been found there the mixture of amino acids is racemic (equal mix of L and R). This would be expected from an abiotic chemical reaction in space making these things. Miller and Urey found a racemic mixture of AAs in their famous experiment.
some meteorites have been found to contain an 'enantiomeric excess' of one form or the other. could this be contamination from Earth? well, some of the meteorite AAs are rather unique and not found here in any numbers. when it comes to AAs, it is very difficult to think of a totally physical process that would lead to such an excess. hmmm.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space.
FAIL
There is plenty of 13C on earth, along with the much more abundant 12C and the occasional and unstable 14C.
What they found was that the ratio of 12C to 13C was not that which would be found if the bases had been formed on earth from the available carbon pool.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Well, i'm sure finding the material was great and all... but... (i'm not a scientist by any words... just a nerd) i'm pretty sure that the heat of the atmosphere would rip off a couple of layers of the meteorite and all "genetic material" along with it. I'm not shooting down the theory that life could have started somewhere else, i'm just saying that the chances are slim to none. (though, i still do hold true to the idea that Earth is not the only planet with intellegent life) and for all you sci-fi fans, i dont mean little green people who speak in growls. Wich leads me to a question, why do we always portray "aliens" as naked and having no set language?
of course not personally i feel that it means that the ratio is some bizzare symptom of earthlings.
correct!but how about aliens disco ball. c mon that must have been flown out of there spaceship when they might have been having a disco night
the speed by which a meteorite travels is very high.upon entering the earths atmosphere it faces disruption or u can say earths atmosphere acts as an speed breaker.so the comparitive speed by which a meteorite hits the earths surface is very low so u can use the delicate emphasis of LANDING.
Everybody wants to cut NASA, which is probably why Bush claimed we were going to Mars. Snickersnort. We could have done it right after going to the moon, and probably should have. I doubt we could pull it off right now. Not because we can't redevelop lost tech, and supersede it in other places, but because there's no oil or terrorists there and the cold war is over. Maybe we can have a new cold war with Iran or Israel or something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
..applies to wikipedia too; there is a difference between RNA (RiboNucleic Acid) and ribozymes (ribonucleic acid enzymes). Big difference. By itself, RNA does little until processed by ribozymes to make proteins.
[insert witty comment here]
You know you have to have evidence first before you can have a massive pile of evidence? I see this list of claimed evidence, but you have to rule out delusions and hoaxes. This doesn't cut it.
Well of course the building blocks for life came from space. Everything on Earth (or its building blocks) came from space. The Earth itself came from space. In fact we're still there.
It isn't really that hard to see life arising of it's own accord. Just about every biochemical that is vital to the identity of a cell can self assemble given the proper conditions. The easiest to see is a lipid layer. Take droplets of oil, put them in water and watch as they all join together. As long as primitive lipids can be generated chemically, they will self assemble into a micelle or cell bilayer. No there isn't going to be a giraffe spontaneously generated from a lava vent. Neither is there going to be a bacteria generated. But a super super primitive cell (lipids surrounding RNA or DNA) is quite easily imaginable IMO.