Asteroid Impacts May Have Formed Life's Building Blocks

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 8, 2014 @11:48AM from the project-genesis-begins dept.

sciencehabit writes: A high-powered laser in the Czech Republic has now provided provocative evidence that the hellish conditions produced when an asteroid or comet slams into Earth could have created some key building blocks of life on Earth. In a lab experiment intended to duplicate the high temperatures and pressures of such an impact (abstract), researchers used the laser to simultaneously make adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil, the four organic compounds in RNA, which many believe to have been the first molecule to encode genetic information.

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Re:why is it always comets and asteroids? by gewalker · 2014-12-08 13:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

IMO, these announcements really don't really contribute anything meaninful. We pretty much know that simple organic molecules can form in a number of ways. Miller-Urey taught us quite a while ago that the basic precusrsor components were easily formed with basic chemistry that exists in nature.
Getting the components to dance together as a living entity is a tremendously more difficult and unsolved problem. According to all we know abiogenisis is very improbable -- even with eons of chemicals doing their thing.