The key ingredients for life on Earth came from space, new evidence suggests

image via Space.com

October 11, 2024, 6:07 PM

• •Meteorites delivered the building blocks of life to the primordial Earth from space, a new study suggests.
• •The meteorites would have been the fractured remains of early
• •unmelted asteroids
• • a type of planetesimal.
• •The research conducted by Martins and colleagues may have implications far beyond the reaches of our planet, assisting in the ongoing search for life elsewhere in the cosmos.

New evidence has emerged suggesting that the building blocks of life were delivered to the primordial Earth from space by meteorites. The researchers tracked the chemical element zinc in meteorites to determine the origin of Earth's volatiles. They found that 90% of Earth's zinc originated from unmelted planetesimals with higher amounts of intact volatiles.

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