We Are Stardust?

[Lonan3]

Comets could have brought the basic ingredients of life to Earth, scientists revealed yesterday.

The first analysis of samples that Nasa's Stardust mission brought back to Earth from a comet earlier this year has revealed that comets contain a richer range of ingredients than previously thought, including the complex molecules needed to kick-start biology.

 

The findings will force a re-evaluation of the traditional thinking on comet formation. "We think we know what these things are made of and then suddenly we find that, no, we don't," said Monica Grady, an astronomer at the Open University who worked on the Stardust samples.

 

GUARDIAN LINK

[Rhumsaa]

so Bowie is a god?

[Whimsy]

Fred Hoyle was saying that for years. So was Fred Dibnah, but in a different way. Sort of "Ee-hecky-thump, that's a grand bit of metal and bolty thingys."

[Chinahand]

As ever with the press they are trying to make out a minor scientific point is something huge.

 

As Whingy says Fred Hoyle's work in the 1950s started to show that complex organic molecules existed on Comets and might have a role in seeding the earth with such things. My guess is that the head and tag line writer was totally separate from the journalist who wrote the main part of the article, which admits:

 

"It's a fairly widely held belief that comets may have played a key role in delivering organics to the early Earth and played a role in getting life started," said Scott Sandford of Nasa's Ames research centre, who led one of the research teams.

 

When the Earth first formed, it would have been a molten body so hot that any organic materials already present on it would have perished. Any complex organic materials made in space would have had to arrive on the young Earth well after the planet had cooled down. "A lot of our findings support this interesting idea, which is that comets played this key role," said Dr Sandford.

 

"We don't know how life got started on the Earth. But one would presume that the more complex the things you drop on the Earth, the easier it might be for life to get started. We know that comets and asteroids deliver this sort of material."

 

Of most interest are the types of organic molecules seen in laboratory simulations of the early solar system, in which scientists irradiate ices containing dirt and dust. These produce a lot of organic compounds including amino acids; Wild 2 seems to contain similar molecules.

 

The research confirms and builds upon previous work and theories ... wow, what a surprise!

 

An important point is that this is not the only source of organic molecules, just one of the sources. Exo-genesis is not the only theory by any means.

[Albert Tatlock]

Plus we are all stardust anyway - as many of the heavier elements e.g. iron can only be made under the pressure and at the temperatures inside a star. Past stars exploded and reformed into other stars and planets...and us.

[VinnieK]

As ever with the press they are trying to make out a minor scientific point is something huge.

 

That reminds me of a story two or three years ago when the newspapers exclaimed with no small amount of enthusiasm that astronomers had discovered an "earth like planet", with a fair portion of the various accounts given over to speculation about the possibility of life existing on this planet.

 

The only problem with this story is that it was great on speculation and claim, and low on fact. A few searches of google later it turns out that the scientists in question had discovered what they said could turn out to be a rocky planet. If it were a rocky planet, that alas is where the similarity ended, since the object in question was orbiting a brighter sun than our own at a distance of somewhere between those from mercury and venus to our sun, and that's before considering anything like atmosphere.

 

That's not to belittle the significance of the discovery, which at the time was fairly considerable as until then the vast majority of planets discovered had been gas giants. You couldn't even make the excuse that they were using a little bit of sensationalism to interest the reader in a scientific topic, because the factual content ended at "Scientists have discovered a planet", never to emerge from the depths of whimsy and fantasy that the rest of the coverage was composed of. Many people criticise journalists for adopting what they view as a sensationalist approach where fact is sacrificed in favour of a headline, regardless of how newsworthy a story may be in its unadulterated form: There are few examples where this is more true than in the case of science editors!