Glycine found in space

Ordinary glycine - the basic amino acid that many computer scientists take to increase productivity and relieve nervous tension - was found on comet Wild 2 as part of the distributed project Stardust @ Home.

The Stardust @ Home project started on February 7, 1999, when the small scientific ship Stardust (Stardust) was launched into space. His task was to penetrate the tail of comet Wild 2 and collect samples of matter - the so-called interstellar dust, which is the oldest material that has remained unchanged since the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

On January 15, 2006, after seven years of travel, the spacecraft returned back and dropped a capsule containing stellar dust samples onto the Earth. Scientists carefully removed an airgel collector the size of a tennis racket, placed it in a microscope and carefully scanned the entire surface of 1000 square meters. see. It turned out almost a million photos that had to be carefully examined for the presence of a foreign substance. This is exactly what the participants in the Stardust @ Home project have been doing for the past three years.

The experiment turned out to be super-successful. Firstly, it was possible to find many particles of stardust. Secondly, traces of glycine were found on these samples. The substance is clearly of unearthly origin, because it has much more ¹³ C isotopes than in terrestrial glycine.

Thus, scientists have received convincing evidence that comets really carry life from one galaxy to another. It was they (through meteors or meteorites) that brought basic amino acids to the Earth a couple of billion years ago. It turns out that in other galaxies, life, too, could have arisen from the same basic bricks.

That is, the inhabitants of other planets can be humanoids, similar to us both externally, both in metabolism and physiology. If there is intelligent life throughout the cosmos, then it has common roots. At least aliens should definitely be in the visible part of the spectrum.