As NASA’s Terra satellite image clearly shows, planet Earth is mostly covered in water. Rece studies suggest that cosmic dust may have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth. This finding has challenged the common theories about the origin of life.
According to the scieific news departme of Tekna Technology Media, the origin of life on earth has been a fundameal question for scieists. Many theories attribute the origin of life to complex chemical processes during which simple organic molecules gradually turned io more complex structures and finally io living organisms. However, closer examination has shown that the rocks that make up the Earth’s crust are very poor in life-giving elemes such as phosphorus, sulfur, nitrogen, and carbon. In fact, living organisms are in fierce competition for these limited elemes for their survival.
According to a popular theory, life-giving elemes have eered it from outside the earth. But how these elemes reach the surface of the earth without being destroyed by the impact with the earth’s atmosphere, is still an unanswered question. In a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, scieists have investigated the role of cosmic dust in the origin of life. Cosmic dust is very small particles that are produced in space due to collisions of asteroids or evaporation of comets.
The researchers of this study believe that unlike large celestial bodies, a steady stream of cosmic dust is moving towards Earth. Also, a significa part of these small particles pass through the earth’s atmosphere and reach its surface without being seriously damaged. Therefore, cosmic dust can carry significa amous of life-generating elemes that are necessary for the initiation of chemical processes leading to the emergence of life.
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