We're all aliens... how humans began life in outer space

[Turborama]

Source: The Independent (UK)

The mystery of how the building blocks of biology came to be on Earth may finally have been solved

By Steve Connor |Tuesday, March 01 2011

As scientific mysteries go, this is the big one. How did life on Earth begin? Not how did life evolve, but how did it start in the first place? What was the initial spark that lit the fire of evolution?

Charles Darwin solved the mystery of life's wondrous diversity with his theory of natural selection. But even he was flummoxed by the ultimate mystery of mysteries: what led to the origin of life itself?

=snip=

In fact, a growing body of evidence is now pointing to deep space as the possible source of the raw materials that formed the building blocks of life. The latest study, which focused on a class of meteorites that fell on to the Antarctic ice sheet, also suggests that life's origins may have been extraterrestrial.

An analysis of the meteorites has revealed that these rocks can be induced, under high pressures and temperatures, to emit nitrogen-containing ammonia, a vital ingredient for the first self-replicating molecules that eventually led to DNA, the molecule at the heart of all life.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/were-all-aliens-how-humans-began-life-in-outer-space-2228530.html

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Leading article: Bolt from the blue

Source: The Independent (UK)

Tuesday, March 01 2011

Once upon a time there was the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe. Now, you could say, we have another, more local, "big bang" – for the origin of life on Earth. According to scientists in Arizona, the crucial components necessary for life to start may not have been generated by our own planet in the first instance, but come from somewhere deep in outer space, carried by the barrage of meteorites that crashed into the earth four billion years ago. The key is the discovery that a meteorite was capable of providing nitrogen-containing ammonia.

In one way it might seem disappointing that the Earth was not self-sufficient and may not have produced its own life. But perhaps we should not be so surprised. Our planet, at that time, was an extremely inhospitable place, hot and devoid of oxygen. That the vital conditions may have come together by chance, in part, literally as bolts from the blue, brings a satisfactorily quixotic aspect to scientific study – and, happily, hammers some more nails into the coffin of Intelligent Design.

But it is not entirely consoling. If the humans of today are the consequence of a protracted and haphazard bombardment from outer space, will capricious extraterrestrial intervention also determine the end? And will it be another bang, or a whimper?

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-bolt-from-the-blue-2228577.html

[Warren Stupidity]

1. I really detest headlines that are full of shit.

Generally I like The Independent, but this article is pathetic. Humans did not begin life in outer space, they began it as late hominids in Africa.

[-..__...]

3. With a little help from our freinds...

[Turborama]

4. I think you might have either only read the title, not read the article in full or misunderstood it

They're not saying humans landed on earth from outer space.

The building blocks for life did.

Hence all life on earth, including humans, "began life in outer space".

[Warren Stupidity]

6. " I really detest headlines that are full of shit."

what part of that did you not understand?

[Turborama]

8. I understood it very well, thanks. I also read this...

"Humans did not begin life in outer space, they began it as late hominids in Africa."

That's why I wrote what I wrote in my reply.

They're not saying humans landed on earth from outer space.

The building blocks for life did.

Hence all life on earth, including humans, "began life in outer space".

What I really detest is when people only give knee jerk reactions to headlines and don't bother reading/responding to the actual articles.

[greyl]

9. It's a poorly worded, slightly sensationalistic headline.

The headline doesn't do justice to the content of the article, it perverts it.

Literally, the headline means humans - in particular - did not originate on Earth, but in outer space. By specifying "humans", it implies that the article isn't about "life" at large.

Warren Stupidity and I are coming from the same place. ;)

This is a better headline (for a different article altogether) :
It Came from Outer Space: “Comets Brought Building Blocks of Life to Earth”

If it were We Came from Outer Space: “Comets Brought Human Life to Earth”, I'd flame it for being a shitty headline.

[Turborama]

12. It's how you interpreted it. If the article is correct, humans began life in space. Literally.

Whatever, anyway.

I can't be bothered with discussing headlines, it's a waste of time.

I'm more interested in what's in the articles.

[greyl]

14. I interpreted it using the English language code. ;)

It's really a not a huge deal - the subject of the article is more interesting - but shitty headlines should always be fair game for calling bullshit on, no matter what the subject. I don't mind giving the press a hard time. :)
(not that my posts on DU actually bother the press)

[Turborama]

16. As I said, headlines are a waste of time for me

LBN has strict rules about having to post them as is and I got over debating them a long time ago.

Having said that, I did like your comment about "creation myths", though. ;-)

[greyl]

17. That's cool.

I didn't mean to be giving you a hard time. :)

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Even that is exaggerating the findings

One of the building blocks for life - reduced nitrogen - may have originated in outer space. What arrived in the meteorites can in no sense be called 'life', so no sort of life 'began in outer space' (unless you accept that 'life began in supernova explosions' as well, when heavier elements are formed). There has been doubt that the early conditions on Earth would have produced much reduced nitrogen, which is needed for amino acid formation. Now they've found a class of meteorites will emit ammonia under high pressure and temperature, so it's a possible source for the reduced nitrogen.

There are also hypotheses that a significant amount of the water on Earth arrived as comets crashing into the already formed Earth. But go back a few hundred million years more, and there wasn't an Earth as all - it all had to form from the material that formed the solar system. The order in which the chemicals arrive seems to me a fairly small detail. The interesting bit, I think, is when something that can possibly be called 'life' appears - molecules that replicate.

Here's a better article on this: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/asteroids-could-have-delivered-ammonia-to-the-early-earth.ars

[greyl]

10. At least the headline strikes religious creation myths skwar in the nits. ;) nt

[Amonester]

2. Life is part of this universe (and others we can't see...)

The spaces in between aren't empty, simply because, the 'space' itself exists.

[WatsonT]

5. Panspermia

an old theory. Interesting. Not sure if there's anything to it but I do like the idea. It would mean life is going to be more common in the universe than would otherwise be expected.

Maybe we should return the favor and start shooting off rockets filled with some particularly hardy bacteria in random directions.

[Baclava]

7. Purity control is essential to all alien-human hybrid experiments

Somebody has to come back and clean up the mess, eventually.

[greyl]

11. Creative Contamination is the new paradigm.

Purity control is so 20th century.

[Baclava]

13. Well if these alien skygods think they can just come in and impregnate our women anytime they please

They've got another thing coming...I say we go out and hit their approaching armada in a preemptive strike, show them we mean business.

Yeah - we know you're out there watching, you bastards.

[greyl]

15. Let's launch a full-out attack on amino acids and the meteorites they ride in on

straight away, Sir!

[MilesColtrane]

18. Ammonia hunh?

So we owe everything to the impact of a piece of used Kosmic Kitty Litter billions of years ago?

This may explain the global inchoate popularity of LOLCats.

[HEyHEY]

20. Tom Crusie? Is that you?

[eppur_se_muova]

21. This proves nothing. Ammonia is no more complicated than water.

Ammonia occurs in huge quantities of all the gas giants, and probably occured in the atmosphere of primitive Earth as well. If meterorites provided a few kilograms more, it would be literally a drop in the ocean.

A single tiny point of evidence does not support the hugely speculative conclusion.

Darn, too late to unrec.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. However, they did already think that Earth was not then conducive to producing ammonia

This article explains it better than the one in the OP: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/asteroids-could-have-delivered-ammonia-to-the-early-earth.ars

and commentary from a science blog:

On the early Earth, on the other hand, the prebiotic inventory of reduced nitrogen necessary for the formation of N-containing biomolecules has been difficult to predict. The hypotheses of a reducing atmosphere had initially allowed one to envision considerable ammonia abundance as well as evolutionary pathways for the production of amino acids (e.g., by Urey-Miller-type processes). However, the current geochemical evidence of a neutral early Earth atmosphere, combined with the known photochemical destruction of ammonia, has left prebiotic scenarios struggling to account for a constant provision of ammonia.

An abundant exogenous delivery of ammonia, therefore, might have been significant in aiding early Earth ‘s molecular evolution, as we should expect it to have participated in numerous abiotic as well as prebiotic reactions.

http://scienceblog.com/43275/abundant-ammonia-aids-lifes-origins/

[Bardley]

22. as an Operating Theaton, I knew this before you did

you will understand if you ever reach my level

[Blue_In_AK]

24. Joni Mitchell said it well...

We are stardust
(Billion year old carbon)
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.



Don't let 'em get you down, Turbo. I knew exactly what your headline meant. :)