BEIJING, Sep. 8 (Xinhuanet)-- NASA's Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1 has supported the notion that comets seeded the barren infant planet of Earth with the chemical precursors of life.
In results published in Thursday's edition of Science Express, Deep Impact scientists say they have found high levels of organic chemicals beneath the surface of Tempel 1's core.
One surprise is that the experts have detected an unexpectedly high concentration of methyl cyanide which is a key player in reactions that form DNA.
"If methyl cyanide is a particularly abundant component, it would suggest that comets could have delivered an abundance of these highly reactive compounds to the early Earth," notes Tom McCollom, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics
No comments:
Post a Comment