Did Comets Bring Life to Earth?

[Seldom Bucket]

Understanding how life began on Earth engages many fields of science. It’s a complex question involving related bits of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and biology. Things have come a long way since the fourth century B.C., when Aristotle taught that life arose on its own from inanimate objects.





Critical findings of the past five decades all point to a picture of how complex, self-replicating cells could have commenced in Earth’s early days. In the 1950s, chemists Harold Urey and Stanley Miller demonstrated that small, life-related molecules, such as amino acids, could have formed under conditions likely present on the young Earth.

Did Comets Bring Life to Earth?

No one knows how significant cometary contributions were in seeding the young Earth with organic chemicals.

astronomy.com