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Oxygen Gas, Methane, and Water on Comet 67P Give Clues To Early Earth Life

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Nov 23, 2015 09:34 AM EST

All humans are made of the same minerals that stars are, explained Carl Sagan once. Each one here is made up of "more cells than there are stars in the galaxy", which makes us wonder, just like science, philosophy, and religion have always done---how on earth did we get here, and why are we here in the first place?

We may be getting answers to at least one of the questions from the exciting new discovery, the Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 67P, according to natureworldnews.

Life seems to have been created by amino acids that landed on the earth through meteors. Hence, violent action created some drops of water on a "sterile planet". Comet 67P, which is about as old as the solar system--about 4.6 billion years old---has also brought with it a surprising discovery setting back planetary scientists and astrobiologists further than thought, with molecular oxygen released from the comet's tail end. It should have "burned out" with the birth of the solar system, reacting against the hydrogen.

Oxygen, the "dirty snowballs" in space is found more in the ice rather than in the gas form. It stays stable in spite of the comet's position from the sun. Hence the gas precedes the solar system.

It is thought that the comets released some ice that might have broken up into radioactive particles, which fuelled the tail in its orbit, according to scientificamerican.

Hence, molecular O2 oxygen, water and methane are present on 67P, although oxygen is the rarest particle, present in few known places beyond the earth and the "gas giants of our solar system".

Today, scientists speculate that the universe always existed in some form much before the Big Bang. As no life exists on 67P, it is possible that the process of the formation of the solar system has not been too violent, as thought. It is important, though, to bring all the pieces together to evolve a credible hypothesis of life on earth.

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