Comets contain elements such as water,
ammonia, methanol and carbon dioxide
that could have supplied the raw
materials, in which upon impact on early Earth
would have yielded an abundant
supply of energy to produce amino acids and jump start life.
A group of international scientists including a Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory researcher have confirmed that life really could
have come from out of this world.
The team shock compressed an icy mixture, similar to what is
found in comets, which then created a number of amino acids - the building
blocks of life. The research appears in advanced online publication Sept. 15 on
the Nature Geoscience journal website.