NASA finds DNA components in meteorites, says they originated in space

http://www.space.com/12569-meteorites-dna-building-blocks-discovery.html

by ssclafani • 15 years ago

241 87 15 years ago

This item - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2863503 - is intended to be the same thing, but incorrectly points to a generic front page. A pointer has been put there to direct people here.

baxter• 15 years ago

The original NASA article: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorit...

aab1d• 15 years ago

Thanks for the link. Makes me wonder, if life did come from space then we will have to start exploring space more seriously. The possibility of a aliens existing somewhere else cannot be ignored any longer.

scott_s• 15 years ago

This HN thread links to an article that describes the enormous difficulties in interstellar travel: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2639456

hirenj• 15 years ago

Can anyone find the actual article on PNAS? The closest I can get is http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/08/04/1105715108.abst...

And this is the lab page, that also has no info on the paper.

http://astrobiology.gsfc.nasa.gov/analytical/index.html

This is one thing that consistently annoys me about most scientific journalism online, and about the press releases by institutions. Is it really that hard to post a link to the abstract page of the actual journal?

varjag• 15 years ago

No, NASA says they can originate in space. There is a difference.

srl2• 15 years ago

NASA is confident that these, at least, did. (Of course, they could also have simultaneously been created terrestrially - but that doesn't change the fact that they were also created in space.)

We have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space. (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorit...)

torstesu3• 15 years ago

I have always been curious as to how religion will tackle proof of alien life. Do aliens get to go to heaven?

corin_• 15 years ago

Your second sentance is irrelevant, it's not like every living thing on earth is believed to go to heaven.

torstesu3• 15 years ago

I do not agree that it is completely irrelevant when including the possibilities of life at a higher intellectual level. It would still put religion in a difficult position; if God created humans, he must have created aliens. At what intellectual level would you set the barrier? Must it demonstrate empathy? Love? And who would decide? What gives a human the right, as it clearly is the guy in the sky that is the gatekeeper.

rufibarbatus3• 15 years ago

It may be relevant precisely because not every living thing on earth is believed to go to heaven. "But these guys don't get to go to heaven" is part of the rationale behind a lot of modern genocides, and before that many cases of slaughter and slavery. If we or the aliens are to think that of each other, hey, that's enough premise for a real-life Hollywood classic.

Jach• 15 years ago

Religion doesn't need a literal interpretation to succeed, they'd just sweep it under the rug like everything else. Indeed, I think the majority of religious people do not believe much literally, and at least many of them are simply believers in belief.

torstesu3• 15 years ago

I totally agree. Still, a discovery so profound as first contact must have some impact to their belief. But then again, my guess is that when this discovery is made, the larger part of the world are secularists.

danteembermage2• 15 years ago

My religion has taught me there was alien life since I was a child. I was also taught that all humans and all animal life will be resurrected. It's not too hard to extrapolate that intelligent alien species, should they exist, would as well. So maybe the answer to your question is "It depends on the religion."

arethuza• 15 years ago

What religion is that?

dragonquest• 15 years ago

If you don't mind sharing and I mean this respectfully, could you inform us which religion is this?

kbutler2• 15 years ago

Sounds like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, commonly known as Mormon). I am LDS.

One citation: http://lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/76.16-24?lang=eng#... All to come forth in the resurrection of the just & unjust, through Christ the worlds are and were created, the inhabitants are sons and daughters of God.

cookiecaper• 15 years ago

And for the record, "alien life" in Mormonism means other earths very similiar to the one we inhabit, populated by people like the people that live here on our earth. Not usually what most people think of when they hear of aliens.

rorrr• 15 years ago

They will find evidence of aliens in their religious texts. Always post factum.

joshuacc• 15 years ago

The idea of non-terrestrial intelligences has been part of Judeo-Christian belief for thousands of years. Angels are generally considered both non-physical and non-terrestrial. But theologians as orthodox as Thomas Aquinas have also considered belief in non-terrestrial yet physical intelligences to be theologically acceptable[1].

[1] http://vox-nova.com/2009/10/10/on-multiple-worlds-and-multip...

dctoedt• 15 years ago

> I have always been curious as to how religion will tackle proof of alien life.

They may not have to; I can't think of a religious faith that insists that humans are the only sentient beings in the universe. (John Polkinghorne [1] argues that even multi-verses are consistent with the notion of a Creator.)

> Do aliens get to go to heaven?

Same answer as above. And this assumes there is a heaven; not all religious people, indeed not even all 'Christians,' believe this. [2]

-----------------

[1] Polkinghorne is a retired Cambridge University professor of mathematical physics, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He's now 80 years old; when he was 49 he went to seminary to become an Anglican priest, and has written a number of books about science and religion. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Polkinghorne.

[2] Some of us have provisionally concluded that a sensible way to bet is this: Over the very long term, the apparent on-going 'construction' of a cosmos, in which we seem to be participating, is likely to work out unimaginably wonderfully, but we really can't even speculate as to much more than that. See http://www.questioningchristian.com/2007/02/another_way_to_.... (Disclosure: I'm the author; the comments are worth reading as well.) EDIT: Polkinghorne has published what he describes as "naïve speculation" about how heaven might be explainable in terms of string theory. See http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/04/resurrection_ap.....

benpbenp• 15 years ago

You may be surprised to learn there was debate on this topic from at least the high middle ages. A quick Google search found this write up, which seems to be a pretty good summary.

http://vox-nova.com/2009/10/10/on-multiple-worlds-and-multip...

EDIT: This is quite good too:

http://www.unav.es/cryf/extraterrestriallife.html

peteretep• 15 years ago

http://i.imgur.com/nta4G.gif

(from SMBC, and I can't find the original :-P)

benhoyt• 15 years ago

A statement from within orthodox Christianity about this (http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/248/are_god_and_al...):

   God became man in Jesus in order to save us. So if
   there are also other intelligent beings, it’s not a
   given that they need redemption. They might have
   remained in full friendship with their creator.

The article also includes an interesting quote from C. S. Lewis on the subject:

   I look forward with horror to contact with the other 
   inhabited planets, if there are such. We would only 
   transport to them all of our sin and our acquisitiveness, 
   and establish a new colonialism. I can’t bear to think of 
   it. But if we on Earth were to get right with God, of 
   course, all would be changed. Once we find ourselves 
   spiritually awakened, we can go to outer space and take 
   the good things with us. That is quite a different 
   matter.

jimbokun2• 15 years ago

Lewis also wrote a SciFi trilogy to explore these ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Trilogy

jarin5• 15 years ago

Although I am deeply unreligious and disagree with much of what the Vatican says regarding birth control etc, I've been impressed with the Vatican's statements in past years re: the Big Bang, evolution, aliens, etc.

The Vatican's chief astronomer said that aliens likely have souls and he would "gladly baptize one if it asked".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/17/pope-astronome...

eru3• 15 years ago

Don't be fooled by the Vatican and evolution. They believe in guided evolution, not in a blind watchmaker.

rokhayakebe2• 15 years ago

My biggest fear is dying before mankind finds the definite scientific answer to death and our origin/s. We seem to be so near (~ one century away).

rufibarbatus3• 15 years ago

We seem to be reaching good enough models (arguably some of them will be thoroughly reproducible in laboratories soon enough). But I don't think we'll arrive at a definite answer here. My guess is that we'll come up with multiple ways it could've happened, along with their respective degrees of likelihood.

/me leans back on his armchair

ams6110• 15 years ago

This is really your biggest fear? Or is that just a figure of speech. I'm genuinely curious, as while I think this "answer" might be intellectually satisfying to some degree, I see it as making little difference in practical matters.

I also think it's an answer that will never come. I don't see any inconsistency between a universe created by God and any scientific observations we make within that creation.

rokhayakebe2• 15 years ago

I see it as making little difference in practical matters

It changes everything. It is like being 30 years old and finding you were adopted. You want to know where you come from.

Edit: But besides what you and I think, what will it mean to the world if religion was "proven" to be man-made, as well as the idea of a Higher Power.

jarin5• 15 years ago

> I don't see any inconsistency between a universe created by God and any scientific observations we make within that creation.

I don't know if there's a name for this argument, but it would seem to imply that a god or gods are not necessary (whether or not it or they exist). When you combine that with Occam's Razor (the hypothesis that makes the fewest assumptions is likely the correct one), my interpretation is that there is likely not a god or gods.

jeffool• 15 years ago

I think my biggest lament will be dying before we get off this rock and/or contact other intelligent life. But I think we're very far off from that.

felipemnoa2• 15 years ago

Mine would be not seeing what technological improvements we will come up next in the next century.

xerxes2001• 15 years ago

I should not have watched Falling Skies before reading this...

haakon2• 15 years ago

I should not have watched Falling Skies either, but mostly because it sucks so bad. :-(

DonnyV• 15 years ago

WHAT!!! I have to say the show started out slow but it turned out really good.

po• 15 years ago

So one thing to keep in mind here is that according to NASA, the meteorite itself is generating these compounds:

Thirdly, the team found these nucleobases -- both the biological and non-biological ones -- were produced in a completely non-biological reaction. "In the lab, an identical suite of nucleobases and nucleobase analogs were generated in non-biological chemical reactions containing hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and water. This provides a plausible mechanism for their synthesis in the asteroid parent bodies, and supports the notion that they are extraterrestrial," says Callahan. (from the NASA article: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorit...)

This does not mean that there is developed life on another planet that then traveled to us. What it does mean is that the building blocks of life that were seeded on earth are probably pretty common and therefore were probably also seeded elsewhere.

patrickyeon• 15 years ago

Absolutely. Also, for those not necessarily familiar with the composition of outer space: hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and water are all relatively common "out there", as in "in the spaces between planets and stars and everything else.

bh42222• 15 years ago

It means that the components of life are a "naturally" occurring things, which appear all over the universe, and do not require life to produce them. This in turn implies that life, not just any life, but carbon based, DNA using life, could be more common in the universe then previously thought. And this implies that we here on Earth are even less of an unique snowflake then we thought.

winestock• 15 years ago

If we, here on Earth, are not unique precious snowflakes, then that makes the Fermi Paradox even more paradoxical.

mykhal• 15 years ago

cool. i have found components of my compiled code in ancient mesoamerican, indian and arabic math

evilswan• 15 years ago

This could just be the most significant news in all of human history. Mind blowing that there's now evidence that the building blocks of life exist off-Earth.

abeppu• 15 years ago

I vaguely recall from highschool bio that the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated that it's surprisingly easy to produce a lot of organic stuff by abiotic means. Does anyone with some real knowledge about this area care to explain how surprising this actually is?

hugh32• 15 years ago

I would classify it as "not particularly".

nikhilgk• 15 years ago

> lot of organic stuff

The organic compounds produced by the Miller Urey experiments were mostly amino acids and some sugars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment). These are the building blocks for most of the things that constitute a cell. This discovery may better our understanding of the origins of DNA and RNA - which are the blueprints for putting together the building blocks to make a cell.

axusgrad• 15 years ago

Universe is only 13 billion years old, life on Earth started ~4.5 billion years ago, and the travel times are pretty long. Even if DNA came from outer space, it would have had to start somewhere. At some point it must have developed from inorganic components.

srl2• 15 years ago

The current theory is that the organic material actually originated on the asteroids themselves - on a class known as "CM2 Meteorites". (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorit... - last couple of paragraphs)

Also according to that article, we've successfully reproduced the process of creating organic matter from inorganic matter.

hugh32• 15 years ago

Before anyone gets too excited:

Amino acids on a comet, 2009: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17628-found-first-amin...

Amino acids in interstellar space, 2002: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2558-amino-acid-found-...

and a few more examples exist if you google "amino acids in space".

We've known about amino acids in space for a long time. Amino acids exist all over the damn place.

kia• 15 years ago

I agree about not getting too excited. But to be precise in this case they are talking about nucleobases [1] which are building blocks of DNA. Amino acids [2] are building blocks of proteins.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleobase [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid

ANH• 15 years ago

Yes, but what's interesting about this are the mechanisms of formation and delivery. We have evidence of how these things were formed in space and then delivered to Earth. It's not little green men, but a piece of the puzzle. I think it's pretty damn cool.

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

Not left over smudges from the former inhabitants of planet Krypton? Ah shucks :-).

The interesting point here was the nuceobases (vs the amino acids). Mars water should be interesting to look at.

And of course a sample return mission to Ceres would be interesting as long as we didn't open the capsule in an uncontrolled environment :-).

eru3• 15 years ago

Are you concerned about the capsule getting contaminated, or about Earth getting contaminated? I'd bet on the Earth's microbes to dominate.

powertower• 15 years ago

Amino acids have also been made by slamming meteorite like material into earth like material at impact speeds (impact chemistry creates them due to the greate pressures and energy involved).

omarchowdhury• 15 years ago

Meteorite/comets hitting the sphere of the Earth. The sperm reaching the egg cell. The answer to the beginning is at the beginning.

calebmpeterson2• 15 years ago

While NASA's discovery of nucleobases as opposed to amino acids is certainly interesting, there's a long way between "hey, nucleobases on an asteroid," and "wow, the entire genome of a living creature." There's a big jump in complexity, structure, and organization between organic chemistry and the multi-trillion cell organism we call homosapien.

The comparison in complexity is the rough equivalent of finding a few MOV/JMP/ADD instructions in a random text file as opposed to the source tree for the Linux kernel (I might be underestimating the human genome a little here).

alanh• 15 years ago

Why on earth would you compare these to the human genome, instead of the smallest archeobacteria? Evolution adds complexity over time, we know this, we just need something to replicate first.

A better analogy than the Linux kernel might be a quine.

andrewflnr• 15 years ago

There is still an enormous jump in complexity between a few nucleobases and the smallest archeobacteria. Maybe a full Linux kernel is not the best illustration, but the idea of a kernel in general is a remarkably apt one. At the least, we're talking stuxnet or something.

Even the simplest life is incredibly sophisticated.

calebmpeterson2• 15 years ago

Why wouldn't one make the comparison with the human genome? If the evolutionay mechanisms credited with responsibility for the jump from nucleobases to archeobacteria (which is still incredible, if true) can't be fully and comfortably accredited with the nucleobase to human genome jump then said evolutionary mechanisms are suspect. According to the notion of evolution inherently adding complexity over time, nucleobases to human genome just requires some very large time. If we do know this with such certainty, then my comparison is both apt and reasonable.

orofino• 15 years ago

"nucleobases on an asteroid"

does this star Samuel L Jackson?

NASA finds DNA components in meteorites, says they originated in space

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