Complex molecules in asteroids may be the latest explanation behind the origin of life

Asteroids play the role of time capsules showing what molecules originally existed in our solar system, and may help explain how life started on Earth, a study suggests.

Finding complex molecules in asteroids provides the strongest evidence that such compounds were present on the Earth before life formed, said Nicholas Hud from Georgia Institute of Technology in the US. Knowing what molecules were present helps establish the initial conditions that led to the formation of amino acids and related compounds that, in turn, came together to form peptides, small protein-like molecules that may have kicked off life on our planet.

“We can look to the asteroids to help us understand what chemistry is possible in the universe,” said Hud. “It’s important for us to study materials from asteroids and meteorites, the smaller versions of asteroids that fall to Earth, to test the validity of our models for how molecules in them could have helped give rise to life.

“We also need to catalogue the molecules from asteroids and meteorites because there might be compounds there that we had not even considered important for starting life,” he said. NASA scientists have been analysing compounds found in asteroids and meteorites for decades, and their work …read more