The ultimate kickstarter?

Post Reply
User avatar
Gawdzilla Sama
Stabsobermaschinist
Posts: 151265
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:24 am
About me: My posts are related to the thread in the same way Gliese 651b is related to your mother's underwear drawer.
Location: Sitting next to Ayaan in Domus Draconis, and communicating via PMs.
Contact:

The ultimate kickstarter?

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Thu Jun 06, 2013 11:32 am

"Borrowed" from skeptic.com:
kennyc wrote:New study from Journal of Physical Chemistry.
Life On Earth Shockingly Comes from out of This World
June 5, 2013 — Early Earth was not very hospitable when it came to jump starting life. In fact, new research shows that life on Earth may have come from out of this world.


Lawrence Livermore scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute of Technology colleague Isaac Tamblyn (a former LLNL postdoc) found that icy comets that crashed into Earth millions of years ago could have produced life building organic compounds, including the building blocks of proteins and nucleobases pairs of DNA and RNA.
Comets contain a variety of simple molecules, such as water, ammonia, methanol and carbon dioxide, and an impact event with a planetary surface would provide an abundant supply of energy to drive chemical reactions.
"The flux of organic matter to Earth via comets and asteroids during periods of heavy bombardment may have been as high as 10 trillion kilograms per year, delivering up to several orders of magnitude greater mass of organics than what likely pre-existed on the planet," Goldman said.
Goldman's earlier work is based on computationally intensive models, which, in the past, could only capture 10-30 picoseconds of a comet impact event. However new simulations, developed on LLNL's supercomputers Rzcereal and Aztec, Goldman used much more computationally efficient models and was able to capture hundreds of picoseconds of the impacts -- much closer to chemical equilibrium.
"As a result, we now observe very different and a wider array of hydrocarbon chemical products that, upon impact, could have created organic material that eventually led to life," Goldman said.
....
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144326.htm
Image
Ein Ubootsoldat wrote:“Ich melde mich ab. Grüssen Sie bitte meine Kameraden.”

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests