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snoot
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NASA: DNA Building Blocks Found In Space, Are We Really Alone?
#14897002 - 08/09/11 03:51 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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NASA: DNA Building Blocks Found In Space, Are We Really Alone?
Marisa Krystian | Aug 09, 2011 | 1min:28sec NASA researchers have found the building blocks for life on earth in meteorites, indicating that the components for life on Earth may have originated in outer space. According to the findings from a group of NASA-funded researchers, the scientists found that ready-made DNA parts could have crashed to earth's surface on objects like meteorites, and then assembled under earth's early conditions to create the first DNA.
The researchers made their discovery using samples from 12 carbon-rich meteorites, nine of which came from Antarctica. Then, the team extracted small fragments of the meteorite and ran them through a process to determine their structure. What they found, was adenine and guanine. These are two of the nucleobases needed to make DNA - that form the rungs of the ladder. The lead researcher of the discovery said people have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960′s, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life. The team all but ruled out the possibility that the compounds were contaminated on earth because the nucleo-bases they found do not naturally occur on this planet. The research has even greater implications than first meets the eye. If the ingredients for life were brought here from some external source, there's always the possibility that the same thing has happened elsewhere in the universe--possibly many times over. This would give credence to the theory that life exists on other planets. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://tv.ibtimes.com/nasa-dna-building-blocks-found-in-space-are-we-really-alone/1568.html
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∞ I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. - Simone de Beauvoir -
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imachavel
I loved and lost but I loved-ftw



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Re: NASA: DNA Building Blocks Found In Space, Are We Really Alone? [Re: snoot]
#14905007 - 08/11/11 06:01 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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this is pretty old news man. some people questioned if bacteria had made it's way onto the meteorite sample and died, then been confused with fossils from outer space. the only thing was none of the cell organism fossils could be identified. akom's razor man, what is more likely, and less elaborate?
but then again, to me it's more elaborate to imagine dna onboard a meteor crashing into earth, then to imagine that somehow the meteor came from earth, from some freak accident hurtling it into space, when life already existed here, and that somehow the meteor returned to us. it's been proven that no earth life, even microbiotic, can survive in space in extreme temperatures and vacuum conditions. but it has been proven that some microbiotic life and hibernate in such conditions, and return to earth from a certain time frame, and awaken from hybernation, and live and thrive once again. I forget the name of the life. so who knows what planet/moon might have once had life, then been destroyed, and yet carried a small sample of microbiotic life that survived until it died off from space conditions.
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snoot
look alive ∞



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Re: NASA: DNA Building Blocks Found In Space, Are We Really Alone? [Re: imachavel]
#14905417 - 08/11/11 09:10 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
imachavel said: this is pretty old news man. some people questioned if bacteria had made it's way onto the meteorite sample and died, then been confused with fossils from outer space. the only thing was none of the cell organism fossils could be identified. akom's razor man, what is more likely, and less elaborate?
but then again, to me it's more elaborate to imagine dna onboard a meteor crashing into earth, then to imagine that somehow the meteor came from earth, from some freak accident hurtling it into space, when life already existed here, and that somehow the meteor returned to us. it's been proven that no earth life, even microbiotic, can survive in space in extreme temperatures and vacuum conditions. but it has been proven that some microbiotic life and hibernate in such conditions, and return to earth from a certain time frame, and awaken from hybernation, and live and thrive once again. I forget the name of the life. so who knows what planet/moon might have once had life, then been destroyed, and yet carried a small sample of microbiotic life that survived until it died off from space conditions.
I think the new's is that they know now that it wasnt contaminated on Earth, but maybe that is old too, heh I'm not sure, was labeled as BREAKING!
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∞ I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. - Simone de Beauvoir -
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5HTSynaptrip
Dopamine Enthusiast



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Re: NASA: DNA Building Blocks Found In Space, Are We Really Alone? [Re: snoot]
#14905476 - 08/11/11 09:28 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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It's so hard to isolate nucleobases because our planet, and by extension every large area beyond where life can exist, is literally covered in them. I would love to know how they performed the extraction and analysis of the meteorite specimens. Talk about an arduous fucking task!
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Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. - My hero, who will be forever remembered, Carl Sagan.
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