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NASA Discovers Life's Building Block In Comet

Posted by timothy on from the low-glycemic-index dept.

xp65 writes "NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft. 'Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet,' said Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. 'Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts.'"

5 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Glycine Deficiency by Falstaft · · Score: 3, Funny

    Strange, we think that a comet wiped out the dinosaurs, and yet another comet like this one could sustain the glycine-deficient dinosaurs at Jurassic Park!

  2. Re:Again? by ionix5891 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ha!

    q: Whats the difference between average slashdotter and average comet?

    a: one gets to spread its "life's building blocks" around

  3. What they did not tell you. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Funny

    Glycine is the only thing they are willing to admit. NASA believes the world is not in a position to digest, (ha, ha) the more significant finding in the comet: High Fructose Corn Syrup.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  4. Re:Again? by Comatose51 · · Score: 4, Funny

    We spread "life's building blocks" around too. It's just that there's no fertile "tracts of land" to receive them.

    --
    EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
  5. Re:Tin Foil Hat by tool462 · · Score: 3, Funny

    So what you're saying is that we only have a 25% chance of being able to digest the alien species, but a 75% chance of being able to use them as a calorie-free artificial sweetener?

    Queue the countdown to NutraSweet funding the SETI program in 3...2...1..