Comets did deliver life's ingredients on Earth

​London: Even if comets did not play as big a role in delivering water as once thought to the Earth they certainly had the potential to deliver the ingredients of life, new research has found.

The possibility that water and organic molecules were brought to the early Earth through impacts of objects like asteroids and comets have long been the subject of debate.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta probe has now shown a significant difference in composition between Comet 67P/C-G's water and that of Earth.

“The multitude of organic molecules already identified by ROSINA, now joined by the exciting confirmation of fundamental ingredients like glycine and phosphorus, confirms our idea that comets have the potential to deliver key molecules for prebiotic chemistry," explained Matt Taylor, Rosetta project scientist of the European Space Agency (ESA).

While more than 140 different molecules have already been identified in the interstellar medium, amino acids could not be traced.
However, hints of the amino acid glycine, a biologically important organic compound commonly found in proteins, were found during NASA's Stardust mission that flew by “Comet Wild 2” in 2004.

Source: IANS