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According to a new study, phosphates, a key element of the building blocks of life, came to Earth from space.
Whether the ingredients needed for life are baked on a planet at birth or added later by meteorites and comets is the subject of much debate. The latest study by researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manatoa provides compelling new evidence that at least phosphorus-based compounds have been generated in space and appeared on Earth during its first billion years ago. Years on the back of falling space rocks.
Phosphates and diphosporic acid are two major essential elements in molecular biology. They are the main components of chromosomes, which carry our genetic information. Without them, we could not reproduce ourselves through our DNA.
Rosetta image taken by OSIRIS narrow-angle comet camera of comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko captured at 10:14 GMT at an altitude of about 1.2 km on September 30, 2016. (Credit: ESA / Rosetta)ESA / Rosetta
"On Earth, phosphine is deadly to living things," said Andrew Turner, lead author of the study in Nature Communications, in a report. "But in the interstellar medium, exotic phosphine chemistry can promote rare chemical reaction pathways to initiate the formation of biorixed molecules such as oxoacids of phosphorus, which could eventually trigger the molecular evolution of life as we do. know.
The research team replicated interstellar ice grains coated with carbon dioxide and water in an ultra-vacuum chamber cooled to -450 ° F to mimic the outside space. When they also exposed the grains to ionizing radiation, like cosmic rays of the Universe, multiple phosphorous oxoacids were formed.
"The phosphorus oxoacids detected in our experiments by the combination of sophisticated analyzes involving lasers, coupled with mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs, could also have been formed in comet ices such as 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko. derive from the phosphine, "said chemistry professor UH Mānoa Ralf Kaiser.
The phosphates would then have gone to the Earth, and potentially to other planets or moons, in meteor showers.
"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 wherever a sufficient amount of phosphine in interstellar ice is available," said Cornelia Meinert of the University of Nice. .
Understanding how these compounds were made is essential to understanding how life is created and how we could look for our Universe for other beings.
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According to a new study, phosphates, a key element of the building blocks of life, came to Earth from space.
Whether the ingredients needed for life are baked on a planet at birth or added later by meteorites and comets is the subject of much debate. The latest study by researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manatoa provides compelling new evidence that phosphorus compounds have at least been generated in space and arrived on Earth over its first billion years on the Earth. back of rocks.
Phosphates and diphosporic acid are two major essential elements in molecular biology. They are the main components of chromosomes, which carry our genetic information. Without them, we could not reproduce ourselves through our DNA.
Rosetta image taken by OSIRIS narrow-angle comet camera of comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko captured at 10:14 GMT at an altitude of about 1.2 km on September 30, 2016. (Credit: ESA / Rosetta)ESA / Rosetta
"On Earth, phosphine is deadly to living things," said Andrew Turner, lead author of the study in Nature Communications, in a report. "But in the interstellar medium, exotic phosphine chemistry can promote rare chemical reaction pathways to initiate the formation of biorixed molecules such as oxoacids of phosphorus, which could eventually trigger the molecular evolution of life as we do. know.
The research team replicated interstellar ice grains coated with carbon dioxide and water in an ultra-vacuum chamber cooled to -450 ° F to mimic the outside space. When they also exposed the grains to ionizing radiation such as the cosmic rays of the Universe, several phosphorous oxoacids were formed.
"The phosphorus oxoacids detected in our experiments by the combination of sophisticated analyzes involving lasers, coupled with mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs, could also have been formed in comet ices such as 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko. derive from the phosphine, "said chemistry professor UH Mānoa Ralf Kaiser.
The phosphates would then have gone to the Earth, and potentially to other planets or moons, in meteor showers.
"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 wherever a sufficient amount of phosphine in interstellar ice is available," said Cornelia Meinert of the University of Nice. .
Understanding how these compounds were made is essential to understanding how life is created and how we could look for our Universe for other beings.
