(ORDO NEWS) — Namely, the meteorite was saturated with organic compounds – carbon-containing molecules that are the building blocks for life on Earth.
According to the research results, which were published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, these compounds were clearly extraterrestrial in origin. Scientists from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago got to the fragments of the meteorite so quickly that the earth’s organic pollution is excluded.
“The fragments of meteorites found are usually teeming with life, but only because they have spent enough time on the surface of the Earth for local microbes and lichens to colonize them.”
“This meteorite is special because it fell into a frozen lake and was very clean. We found that the mineral composition hadn’t changed much and later found that it contained a large amount of extraterrestrial organic compounds,” lead study author Philip Heck, curator of the Field Museum and professor at the University of Chicago, said in a press release.
Some scientists suggest that it was just such an organic matter that appeared on Earth after it was attacked by meteor showers in ancient times.
“These kinds of organic compounds were probably brought to the young Earth by meteorites and may have contributed to the origin of life,” Heck said in a press release.
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