Secret Of Asteroids revealed? Scientists discover origins of building blocks of life
A new study led by Southwest Research Institute Research Scientist Dr. Danna Qasim posits that interstellar cloud conditions may have played a significant role on the presence of key building blocks of life in the solar system.
"Carbonaceous chondrites, some of the oldest objects in the universe, are meteorites that are thought to have contributed to the origins of life. They contain several different molecules and organic substances, including amines and amino acids, which are key building blocks of life that were critical to creating life on Earth. These substances are necessary to create proteins and muscle tissue," Qasim said.
Most meteorites are fragments of asteroids that broke apart long ago in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. Such fragments orbit the Sun -- sometimes for millions of years -- before colliding with Earth.
One of the questions Qasim and others are trying to answer is how amino acids got into the carbonaceous chondrites in the first place. Because most meteorites come from asteroids, scientists have attempted to reproduce amino acids by simulating asteroid conditions in a laboratory setting, a process called "aqueous alteration."
"That method hasn't been 100% successful," Qasim said. "However, the make-up of asteroids originated from the parental interstellar molecular cloud, which was rich in organics. While there's no direct evidence of amino acids in interstellar clouds, there is evidence of amines. The molecular cloud could have provided the amino acids in asteroids, which passed them on to meteorites."
To determine to what extent amino acids formed from asteroid conditions and to what extent they were inherited from the interstellar molecular cloud, Qasim simulated the
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