Essential element for life on Earth found on comet
Date: 07 December 2020 Tags: MiscellaneousIssue
A new study using data from the ESA's Rosetta mission shows that the comet contains the life-critical element phosphorous.
Background
From long time there are many deliberations regarding start of life on Earth. The new discovery tries to answer the question.
Details
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The raw elements for life are known as CHNOPS, which stands for Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorous, and Sulphur.
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Combinations of these six chemical elements make up the large majority of biological molecules on Earth. Together, they account for almost 98 percent of Earth's living matter.
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Scientists had previously found the other five in comets, so finding phosphorous might be the final piece of this puzzle.
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The team of researchers found the phosphorous and fluorine in the inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
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They were present in solid particles collected only a few kilometres from the comet by Rosetta's COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser (COSIMA) instrument.
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The particles were collected on the instrument's target plates, which were then photographed remotely. The individual particles were selected in the images and then measured with a mass spectrometer.
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There was a lack of molecules containing soluble phosphorous on early Earth. Experiments have shown that soluble phosphorous could serve a critical role in the origin of biological molecules.
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This study shows that, along with CHNO and S, P is now known to be present in comets, and those comets could have delivered P to early Earth.
Comets
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail.