When particles collide, they get broken down into their more basic compositions or lead to the formation of new particles.
In a study on the formation of the building blocks of life, scientists used simulated meteorite impacts to find out how a simple acid is formed. Tweaking the experiment a bit, the scientists further discovered how other acids and other proteins essential to DNA construction are formed.
Researchers from the Tohoku University in Japan conducted an experiment in 2009, and found that simulated meteorite impacts revealed the formation of glycine, the simplest and smallest among the 20 amino acids that are commonly found in proteins.
In their 2009 study published in the online journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers from Japan used solid amorphous carbon as the carbon source for the simulated meteorite impacts.
This time, the same team of researchers led by Tohoku University's Dr. Yoshihiro Furukawa conducted a new experiment similar to the one done in 2009, only changing the carbon source with bicarbonate acid. The simulation of meteorite impacts on ancient oceans produced a number of chemicals and amino acids derived from organic compounds. For this new study, the researchers published their findings on Aug. 16 in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
According to Dr. Furukawa, possibly the most abundant species of carbon in the early oceans, as well as in post-impact plumes, bicarbonate is commonly dissolved in atmospheric conditions rich in carbon dioxide.
Using a propellant gun, the researchers conducted hypervelocity impact tests at one kilometer per second. Retrieving the chemical products, they discovered the formation of Nucleobases cytosine and uracil, and a variety of proteinogenic amino acids such as glycine, serine, alanine, glutamic acid, aspartic acid, valine, leucine, isoleucine and proline. They also found the formation of non-proteinogenic amino acids aliphatic amines.
With the various chemical products that came out of the simulation, the results of the latest study found that reactions induced by impact may generate the building blocks of life in prebiotic Earth, at a large scale, with the use of terrestrial carbon reservoirs, and thus suggests a new genetic model that may lead organic molecules being formed in other planets.
