Life: Cosmic Hitchhiker?

[Paul the Human]

Another interesting article. Scientists have discovered ice and 'organic material' in the Asteroid Belt.

A slushy cocktail of water-ice and organic materials has been directly detected on the surface of an asteroid for the first time. The finding strengthens the theory that asteroids delivered the ingredients for Earth's oceans and life, and could make astronomers rethink conventional models for how the Solar System evolved.

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The result was independently confirmed by a team led by Humberto Campins at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He and his colleagues observed 24 Themis for 7 hours one night, as it almost fully rotated on its axis. "Between us, we have seen the asteroid from almost every angle and we see global coverage," says Campins. He and his team also publish their findings in this week's Nature3.

The Full Article

Personally, I like the idea that the potential 'spark of life' may be floating around on asteroids and inadvertently presenting the chance for life to begin on random planets. Perhaps those asteroids are the remnants of planets that once had life themselves.

[Shell B]

Indeed, it is a very nice idea. I sincerely hope that a discovery like that can happen and be conclusively shown to be capable of providing the 'spark of life' in my lifetime. Even then, I doubt it will change the mind of a single creationist on the planet. *sigh*

[Welsh cake]

Amino acids, the building blocks for life and organic matter probably orginated from asteroids or comets.

Life on this planet supposedly came from the oceans, its well possible the immense water pressure down there was a catalyst in helping the first sequences of chemical events leading up to the first nucleic acids.

[The_Flying_Skeptic]

One big misunderstanding in the creationist community is the idea that life on earth must have originated on earth by no influence or support from another astral system (in Nature's article: asteroids). They leech to the scientific controversy of Earth's environment when life or the building blocks of life didn't necessary arise on Earth. There are an infinite number of environments in the universe, and from only the minuscule fraction of environments we have tested, creationists think that it's safe to say only an omnipotence could have created life, the God of the Gaps, the argument from ignorance.

[SleepingDemon]

Personally I think the concept of Panspermia has some credibility as well. We know that our planet was heavily bombarded in it's early years, and a young solar system would have massive amounts of debris floating around. I think the reason that a lot of creationists have a problem with the evolutionary beginning of life on this planet is because they can't understand sand turning into bacteria, in spite of the mud to man theory proposed biblically. With the sheer amount of heavy bombardment on this planet, it's conceivable that an "ark" was among the culprits. It would explain the sudden appearance of life. However 500 million years of molecular collisions probably would as well.

However they can't seem to grasp the idea that if life didn't exist here, it would simply exist somewhere else. Our existence as a species is a matter of chance, we exist because 65 million years ago some cataclysm caused the extinction of the dominant species on this planet, the dinosaurs, giving mammals the opportunity to spread out and prosper. Were it not for that series of events, it's conceivable that dinosaurs would have continued to exist. Every other successful genus that was alive then remains to this day, sharks, crocodiles, rodents, insects, etc.