Washington: Even as detailed images of distant galaxies from the James Webb Space Telescope show us more of the greater universe, scientists still disagree about how life began here on Earth. One hypothesis is that meteorites delivered amino acids life's building blocks to our planet. Now, researchers have experimentally shown that amino acids could have formed in these early meteorites from reactions driven by gamma rays produced inside the space rocks.
Ever since Earth was a newly formed, sterile planet, meteorites have been hurtling through the atmosphere at high speeds toward its surface. If the initial space debris had included carbonaceous chondrites a class of meteorite whose members contain significant amounts of water and small molecules, such as amino acids then it could have contributed to the evolution of life on Earth. However, the source of amino acids in meteorites has been hard to pinpoint.
