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05:34 PM ET 01/12/00
Organic Molecules in Space Found
By PAUL RECER=
AP Science Writer=
ATLANTA (AP) _ A primordial soup of complex organic chemicals
that could be the precursors of life is cooked up very quickly
after the birth of stars, new research suggests.
``Life could have had an easier time starting than we thought
before,'' astronomer Sun Kwok said Wednesday at a national meeting
of the American Astronomical Society.
Kwok, of the University of Calgary, Canada, said a study by the
Infrared Space Observatory showed that large organic molecules
evolve within only a few thousand years from chemicals in the
cloud-like envelope surrounding some stars.
The conclusion is based on the infrared spectra readings of
short-lived, carbon-rich stars that are engulfed in clouds of gas
and dust. Kwok said the clouds are rich in some of the most
advanced organic molecules ever detected in outer space.
``There is no doubt now that such complex molecules exist and
the stars are able to make them with no difficulty,'' said Kwok.
Such chemicals would eventually be ejected into interstellar
space, he said, which makes it possible that they could end up on
planets such as Earth where, under the right conditions, life could
have evolved.
Among the chemicals detected was acetylene, a building block for
benzene and other aromatic molecules that, in turn, can form
complex hydrocarbons, the chemical stuff of life.
Kwok said it is possible that amino acids could be manufactured
around stars, but this molecule, essential to life, cannot be
detected by the current generation of space telescopes.
The Infrared Space Observatory is operated by the European Space
Agency.
Another international team has made calculations that suggest
that life could have arisen on Mars and then been transferred to
Earth by meteorites jolted away from the surface of Mars by
asteroid impacts.
A team of astronomers from nine institutions and five countries
made a serious study of the possibility and found that, if life
ever existed on Mars, then there could have been up to five
trillion life-bearing rocks from Mars that landed on Earth over the
last four billion years.
``The question is, are we really Martians?'' said Mauri Valtonen
of the Turku Observatory in Turku, Finland.
The international team also studied the possibility of
life-carrying asteroids from solar systems beyond the sun landing
on the Earth and found the probability of this to be very low.
``The ancestral cell for life on Earth must have originated
somewhere in our own solar system,'' said Curt Mileikowsky, an
astronomer of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm,
Sweden, and a leader of the research team.
In their calculations, the astronomers considered how frequently
Mars would have been hit by asteroids that blasted rock away from
the Red Planet and sent it flying toward Earth. Although only a few
asteroids from Mars have been found on Earth, the team calculated
that tons of Martian rock is here.
The team also calculated the pressure, temperature, acceleration
and radiation a microbe would have to endure to survive such a
journey from Mars to Earth.
At least two well-known microbes, Deinococcus radiodorans and
Bacillus subtilis, said Mileikowsky, would be capable of surviving
the trip. He said the microbes have been tested in laboratories and
found to be highly resistant to heat, radiation and acceleration
forces.
Mileikowsky said the microbe would have to be near the core of a
Mars rock to be protected enough to survive the journey through the
vacuum of space and endure the searing fall to Earth.
``If the size (of the rock) is more than a football,'' he said,
``heat would not have time to get inside.''
The astronomers estimated that up to one and one-half percent of
the microbes inside such a rock would survive.
The existence of life on Mars is now unlikely, but astronomers
say that early in solar system history the planet had water, an
atmosphere and mild temperatures. For this reason, it is believed
that life could have once existed there. Scientists at the Johnson
Space Center in Houston say they have found evidence that life once
existed inside a Martian asteroid, but the conclusions are
controversial.
Early in solar system history, it is also calculated that up a
trillion Earth rocks were blasted into space and traveled to Mars.
This means that life from Earth could have once seeded Mars.
``Because of the heavy traffic between Earth and Mars, we
couldn't decide which came first,'' Martian life on Earth, or the
reverse, said Mileikowsky.
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