Astronomers have long thought that life moves through the
solar system on the backs of meteorites, meaning that life
on Earth was "seeded" from another planet. New research
shows that it's not necessary for the actual microbes to
travel through space. The fact that a meteorite impact
brings phosphorous to a planet may be enough.
Iron meteorites may have been necessary for the evolution of
life on Earth because they could have provided more
phosphorus than naturally occurs here?enough to give rise to
biomolecules which eventually assembled into microbes that
could evolve and reproduce. Phosphorus forms the backbone of
DNA because it connects genes into long chains and thus is
vital to the formation of life. Planetary scientist Matthew
A. Pasek says, "In terms of mass, phosphorus is the fifth
most important biologic element, after carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, and nitrogen."
Scientists have long wondered where the phosphorous
necessary for life to begin came from, since it?s much rarer
in nature than hydrogen, oxygen, carbon or nitrogen. Pasek
says, "Because phosphorus is much rarer in the environment
than in life, understanding the behavior of phosphorus on
the early Earth gives clues to life's origin?If you are
going to have phosphate-based life, it likely would have had
to occur near a freshwater region where a meteorite had
recently fallen. We can go so far, maybe, as to say it was
an iron meteorite."
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