Comets is where many astronomers have long thought the ocean came from. Comets are literal drops in our ocean. LOTS of comets. The atmosphere and the Earth at large would have been very different, and being bombarded by many giant space snowballs (along with asteroids) would have contributed materials. The missing part is, um, missing. We still do not know. However, these samples contained building blocks, not actual self-replicating RNA. That might seem like nothing, but before this discovery, we thought they only contained one ingredient.

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asdff 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One thing that is beginning to be appreciated is, if you have building blocks, under the right conditions, you also have self replicating RNA.

https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002...

	▲	adrian_b 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is not about the replication or self-replication of RNA. The article is about a mechanism that may produce random nucleic acid molecules, i.e. molecules that do not replicate any template. Reactions of this kind, producing random nucleic acids, must have existed long before the appearance of the first self-replicating RNA, thus before the appearance of any nucleic acid that could be inherited by the descendants of a living being and that could provide any useful feature for that living being.

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heavyset_go 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Meteorites