• Question: life has been found the comet 67p where could this have come from?

    Asked by Cheesers77 to Ciarán, Eoin, Lydia on 20 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Ciarán O'Brien

      Ciarán O'Brien answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      Well, organic molecules have been found on the comet anyway. It’s a good start, but it’s not life, even the simplest virus is made of millions of organic molecules. 🙂

      But it is fascinating to find them on a comet. It raises a strong possibility that life started on earth thanks to comets full of organic molecules crashing into the planet and releasing them into the oceans to react with each other.

      We know very little about comets, though. That’s why the Rosetta mission was so important, landing a probe on a comet will let us find out all sorts of cool stuff about it, maybe even where the comet came from.

      One possibility is that a comet is a chunk of an icy planet or moon that already had organic molecules on it, that got blown into space by a massive explosion or impact of a massive asteroid.

      It might be that comets formed from gas and dust like planets, only with all the chemicals for organic molecules in them, and travelling close to a star melted it enough to get some reactions going that formed the organic molecules.

      Hopefully, the probe on comet 67p will be able to tell us all this some time next year when it can recharge its batteries! 🙂

Comments