Rosetta’s Comet Has Every Vital Ingredient To Create Life, Except One Thing

Rosetta's comet was recently discovered to have the necessary ingredients to jump-start the origin of life on our planet. Scientists found naturally vaporized glycine, a vital amino acid that is found in proteins, and phosphorous which is a key part of DNA and cell membranes in the cloud composed of dust and gas surrounding the comet. The detection were made through observations carried out with the Rosetta spacecraft that has been orbiting Comet 67P since 2014. However, it seems that in spite of having the building blocks of life, which researchers also suspect of having played an important role in the origin of life on Earth, the comet does not reportedly have the key element of energy.

"Energy is completely missing on comet, so on the comet you cannot form life. But once you have comet in a warm place, let's say it drops into ocean, then these molecules get free, get mobile, can react, and maybe that's how life starts," said Kathrin Altwegg, lead researcher of Rosetta mission's ROSINA instrument from the University of Bern. Altwegg also hinted that if a planet is in the correct position in another planetary system, then there could be another go at life. "It may not be successful, but as there are billions of stars and as we now know billions of planets, chances are good."

The bases of proteins, amino acids are complexly folded molecules that are necessary for life on our planet. Altwegg and her team of researchers tried to detect other amino acids around Comet 67P but could only find glycine, a type of amino acid that doesn't need liquid water to form implying that it can be created in cold areas of space. Furthermore, according to the scientists, glycine probably did not originate on the comet but somewhere in the primal dust and debris that created the solar system, much before the formation of planetary bodies.

Scientists have not been able to clearly pinpoint the events or reasons that actually led to the formation of life on our planet, with many theories being forwarded to date. One of the widely believed theories is that meteorites and comets that collided with primordial Earth transferred the organic components necessary for producing life. Revealing that comets could actually be the vast pools of primitive ingredients in the Solar System, which also transported the vital components to Earth, is one of the main aims of the Rosetta mission.