Life Chemical Detected in Comet

On 2 January 2004, the US space agency's Stardust probe encountered Comet Wild-2.

It captured particles from the brilliant 5km-wide (3.1 miles) ball of ice, dust and gas, in the hope of gaining an insight into the creation of our Solar System.

Scientists have identified one of the fundamental chemical buildings blocks of life in a comet for the first time, the US space agency (Nasa) reports.

Glycine is an amino acid found in proteins, the sophisticated molecules that organisms use to build and maintain their systems.

It was detected in the material ejected from Comet Wild-2 in 2004 and grabbed by Nasa's Stardust probe.

The idea that life was "seeded" on the early Earth by comets is a popular one.

Many scientists hold to the theory that billions of years ago, a bombardment by these mountainous balls of ice and rock brought important chemical precursors for life to our planet.

Somehow evolution was kick-started from this primordial "soup", they believe.

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the Universe may be common rather than rare," commented Dr Carl Pilcher, who leads Nasa's Astrobiology Institute.

Glycine has been detected in meteorites before and there are also observations in interstellar gas clouds claimed for telescopes, but the Stardust find is described as a first in cometary material.

Distributed among the world's leading astro-labs, the specimens have since been giving researchers a remarkable insight into the conditions that must have existed in the earliest phases of the Solar System when planets and comets were forming. Nasa said in a statement that it took sometime for the investigating team, led by Dr Jamie Elsila, to convince itself that the glycine signature found in Stardust's sample bay was genuine and not just Earthly contamination.

Whether you view it through a microscope, a telescope, or with your naked eyes, the cosmos is a living organism.

All life is a form of life, and the cosmos is a holonic Holy Hologram

The Big Bang was an autotelic cosmic seed, and the universe is an organism for cultivating Consciousness

All history is the history of the evolutionary transubstantiation of matter to Spirit via biological-life processes of Blood and Reason

Big Seed {space-time * matter-energy ~ evolution} Spirit

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