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RECENT NASA PROBES TO COMETS SUGGEST
THAT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE STARTED INSIDE THEM SAYS NEW RESEARCH
(By Walter Jayawardhana)
Recent probes by NASA to investigate comets overwhelmingly suggest
that life in the universe started inside them says the latest research
paper by a team of Cardiff University scientists led by Professor Chandra
Wickremesinghe.
“Evidence of clay -and clay cannot form without water- and the
organic components of life is now firmly established within comets,”
said Wickremesinghe in an email interview with this correspondent from
Cardiff, Wales in the United Kingdom.
The Sri Lankan born scientist is the main proponent in the world of
a theory called ‘panspermia’ that suggests that life began
in comets and spread to habitable planets across the galaxy.
The research paper soon to be published by the International Journal
of Astrobiology authored by Wickremesinghe and two other scientists
says that findings from NASA probes sent to investigate passing comets
reveal how the first organisms could have started. Professor Bill Napier
and Dr Janaki Wickramasinghe are the co-authors of the paper. It Is
entitled, the origin of life in comets.
"The findings of the comet missions, which surprised many,”
said Wickramasinghe, “ strengthen the argument for panspermia.
We now have a mechanism for how it could have happened. All the necessary
elements, clay, organic molecules and water are there. The longer time
scale and the greater mass of comets make it overwhelmingly more likely
that life began in space than on earth."
The 2004 Stardust Mission to Comet Wild 2 discovered an array of complex
hydrocarbon molecules, latent building blocks for life.
According to the findings of the 2005 Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel
1 a mixture of organic and clay particles inside the comet was evidenced.
One earlier theory for the origins of life proposed that clay particles
acted as a catalyst, converting simple organic molecules into more complex
structures.
“ Hitherto the exceedingly improbable transition from non-life
to life is thought,” said Wickramasinghe , “to have occurred
in a warm pond on Earth, where clays and organics come together. But
a single comet contains more clay, more water persisting in its protected
in its interior for millions of years, and provides a better setting
for an origin of life to occur.”
Wickramasinghe and his fellow researches suggested that radioactive
elements can keep water in liquid form in comet interiors for millions
of years, making them possibly ideal "incubators" for early
life.
Answering the perennial question from where did we come Wickramasinghe
said, “And given that there are 100 billion comets in our planetary
system alone, and hundreds of billions of planetary systems in the Milky
Way, a cometary origin of life is trillions of times more likely than
an origin of life on Earth. I think the evidence is moving inexorably
in the direction of making us aliens!"
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