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A groundbreaking study says that the so-called building blocks of life, the elements that make up the backbone of the organic molecules that make up living matter, have come from space on Earth.
According to a team of researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and their French and Taiwanese colleagues, phosphates and diphosphoric acid, two major chemicals forming the chromosomes carrying our genetic information, have have been generated to billions of kilometers of our planet and have been delivered to Earth by space wanderers such as asteroids or comets.
Scientists used a vacuum chamber cooled to near absolute zero to simulate interstellar ice grains coated with carbon dioxide, water and phosphine.
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When exposed to radiation, these grains create both phosphates and diphosphoric acid. "On Earth, phosphine is deadly to living things," said Andrew Turner of the University of Hawaii.
"But in the interstellar medium, exotic phosphine chemistry can promote rare chemical reaction pathways to initiate the formation of bioregulated molecules such as phosphorus oxoacids, which could eventually trigger the molecular evolution of life such as we know it. "
Scientists have suggested that these phosphorus oxoacids can be found in an interstellar medium, the materials that fill the space between the stars, which are delivered to the Earth by comets or meteorites.
"Since comets at least partially contain the remains of the protoplanetary disk material that formed our solar system, these compounds could go back to the interstellar medium whenever there is enough phosphine in the interstellar ice," he said. said Cornelia Meinert of the University of Nice In France.
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