We are the real aliens, it seems.
Solving a 4 billion-year-old mystery isn’t very easy. Tracing back, trial after trial, is a major investigative effort that science has been trying to make for decades. Now we have finally found another fundamental trace in this research, which could reveal the enigma of how life on Earth began. A new study focused on peptides, a smaller version of protein, one of the building blocks of life on Earth. This research has shown that the amino acids that form peptides do not need water to form and can also arise in space. This means that life on Earth may have come from outside.
“Instead of making the chemical detour where amino acids are formed, we wanted to find out if amino ketene molecules could not instead be formed and combine directly to form peptides,” says astrophysicist Serge Krasnokutski, of the University of Jena in Germany. “And we did it under the conditions that prevail in cosmic molecular clouds, that is, on dust particles in a vacuum, where the corresponding chemicals are present in abundance: carbon, ammonia and carbon monoxide.”
The team used an ultra-high vacuum chamber to mimic space and substrates to mimic dust particles and to show a reaction path that operates at around one quadrillionth of normal air pressure and at a temperature of minus 263 degrees. The theory that life on Earth came from space exists and is supported by many scientists. This research now illuminates that study path even more.
