Earth got some of the key ingredients for life from asteroids in the inner solar system – with a little help from the solar system's largest planet, Jupiter, according to a recent study.
To figure out why we’re all here, and whether anyone else might be out there in the universe, scientists have to start with a more basic question: how did Earth get its supply of the chemicals that make up living cells?
According to Rice University planetary scientist Rajdeep Dasgupta and his colleagues, Earth’s stockpile of phosphorus and nitrogen, two chemical elements essential to life, came mostly from chunks of rock that formed in the inner solar system. And that process might not have happened without Jupiter looming just outside the asteroid belt.
