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While life was once thought to just be a happy accident by mainstream science, the building blocks of DNA and RNA are proving to be not only tenacious, these organic molecules also appear to be able to form in the most unlikely of places, including in deep space on the surface of comets.

In 2014, the Philae lander touched down on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and during it’s investigation of the comet’s chemical makeup, it detected the presence of 16 types of organic compounds. These findings prompted the development of an organics detector for the lander, which led to experiments that simulated the chemical makeup and environmental conditions of the comet to determine what could be found there.
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Continuing it’s role as our solar system’s cosmic vacuum cleaner, the planet Jupiter swallowed up an object that was estimated to be similar in size to the meteorite that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013 — an incident that reportedly caused property damage and injuries to approximately 1,500 people. But, despite being 674.5 million km (419.1 million miles) away, the spectacular explosion the impact caused was recorded by modest-sized telescopes here on Earth.
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The universe is putting on its own Thanksgiving Day light show in the form of Comet ISON, which is set to graze the sun tomorrow.

Assuming that the comet does not disintegrate under the pressure of strong gravitational forces or solar energy, it is set to be one of the most brilliant comets of this century.

The shining heavenly body will pass within 730,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) of the sun, which is a very close shave by cosmic standards. This fact does concern astronomers, many of whom predict that the comet may not survive its brush with the fiery star.
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In the year 775 AD, the sun didn’t just emit a large flare, it emitted something close to a superflare, and scientists who have been studying this mysterious and extremely dangerous phenomenon now believe that they understand what caused it, and the news is disturbing. In 775, auroras appeared in Europe after sunset that were recorded as ‘the sky catching fire.’ Strange phenomena were described such as serpents ‘as if they were sprng out of the ground,’ an apparent reference to plasma discharges taking place at ground level due to extreme amounts of electromagnetic energy being poured into the atmosphere.
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