Scientists now believe that a burst of life known as a gamma ray may have helped play a vital role in the origins of life on Earth. In addition, the find may provide some clues about how the ingredients of life formed in space. According to a new study published this month, scientists may have also shown how these ingredients were formed.
To test this hypothesis, the researchers began a first-of-its-kind experiment to see if gamma rays could actually create amino acids, the building blocks of life. Scientists have long believed that these building blocks can be found on Mars and other planets, and that Earth is just one of many places in the universe where they have learned to thrive.
Through the experiment, the researchers were able to determine that gamma rays could indeed forge the ingredients of life inside space rocks, such as asteroids and comets. These results, then, show just one possible place where these building blocks could have originated, which could give us new avenues to investigate information about the origin of life on Earth.
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The possibility that these building blocks could end up in space is not new, and many have long believed that asteroids, meteorites, and other rocks of space origin helped carry the building blocks of the life on our planet. Countless myths and beliefs have sprung up about this possible origin of life, but none have ever been proven one way or the other.
The study was published in ACS Central Science and shows that the ingredients of life have a perfectly suitable environment to transform into amino acids when exposed to gamma rays. This points to what scientists call a formation pathway that contributes to the origin of life. The researchers also experimented with whether the necessary gamma rays could be produced by the decay of radioactive atoms.
The findings could open new doors to how we investigate the origins of life on Earth. The researchers hope to build on this research in new ways in the future and ultimately demonstrate how the ingredients of life originated in space.