For the first time ever reported, scientists may have finally directly detected a major key of organic compounds on a distant comet. Scientists are ecstatic about finally finding a major key element of several organic compounds. This bolsters the notion that there are celestial objects spread across the vast empty universe containing the chemical building blocks for the life that lived long ago upon planet Earth, and other environments spread out across the mysterious universe.
A well known European based Space Agency, Rosetta, has a spacecraft that would have proven after several detections that a chemical by living organisms to properly generate proteins, has been discovered in a sea of clouds filled with gas and dust. These clouds surround the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The Glycine had been previously indirectly detected on samples taken to Earth in 2006, which had come from another comet, known as Wild 2. However, there were some severe contamination issues that came along with the samples, of which had landed inside of the Utah desert, only making the scientific analysis more complicated than expected.
“Having found glycine in more than one comet shows that neither Wild 2 nor 67P are exceptions,” stated Rosetta scientist, Kathrin Altwegg from the Switzerland University of Bern. She also led the research that was published in the journal of Science Advances.
This new discovery implies that the Glycine is a known common ground ingredient that reigns in several regions of the universe. Altwegg has stated that “amino acids are everywhere, and life could possibly also start in many places in the universe.”
Altwegg, along with her colleagues, have also found phosphorus. Phosphorus is a well known key element that rests inside all living organisms, as well as other organic molecules in the dust clouds that surround the Comet 67P. This was the very first time that phosphorus had been located around a comet. “Meteorites and now comets prove that Earth has been seeded with many critical biomolecules over its entire history,” proclaimed Donald Brownlee from the University of Washington, who also happened to have led NASA’s Stardust comet sample return mission. The scientists are also planning on utilizing Rosetta to search for other types of complex organic compounds that surround the same comet.
“You will need more than amino acids to form a living cell,” Altwegg has said, “It’s the multitude of molecules which make up the ingredients for life.” Rosetta is, in fact, due to end their two-year mission at 67P Comet by flying their ships close to it and then crash-land onto the comets surface this upcoming September.
67P is on an elliptical orbit, in which is looping around the sun and between the orbits of the large planets Jupiter and also Earth. This comet is also heading back into space towards Jupiter just after reaching its closest approach to the sun last August.
Sources: Reuters.
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