Comet with alcohol and sugar shedding light on emergence of life
It is commonly assumed that life was first originated on Earth in a primordial soup or a warm pond around four billion years ago by making ever more complex molecules from simpler ones till the organic molecules were introduced to the barren Earth and paved the way for emerging microscopic life, which was the sole form of life for over two billion years. But are these complex molecules exclusively found on Earth and the like, or could it be other celestial carriers for them, commuting to other habitable zones of the universe? A recent discovery of a comet containing alcohol and sugar, two complex organic molecules, says these roving interplanetary frozen objects are also the messengers of life, shedding new light on the cosmic origins of Earth-like planets.
In an article published in the journal Science Advance on Friday, scientists announced that they have detected, for the first time, two organic molecules, namely ethanol and the simple sugar glycolaldehyde, in the comet C/2014 Q2, or as commonly called Lovejoy.
Along with alcohol and sugar, 21 other molecules, previously seen in other comets, were detected streaming from the comet during its flyby of the Sun.
“These complex organic molecules may be part of the rocky material from which planets are formed,” said the article.
Comets are regarded as time capsules; they contain some of the oldest and most primitive substances preserved from the Sun’s formative years, hence they can be used as a tool to peek into how it all started some 4.6 billion years ago.
“The presence of a major complex organic molecule in comet material is an essential step toward better understanding the conditions that prevailed at the moment when life emerged on our planet,” said Dominique Bockelee-Morvan, an astrophysicist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and one of the authors of the article, adding that “these observations show a possible explanation for its (life's) origin on our planet.”
The green Lovejoy is a visitor from the Oort cloud, an extended shell of icy debris enveloping our Solar System in its outermost reaches, and according to the study, it is one of the most active comets in Earth's orbital neighborhood.
A group of scientists at the Paris Observatory in Meudon, France, conducted the observation with a radio telescope in the Spanish Sierra Nevada to spot Lovejoy.
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