Re:Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed
by jcranmer on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @11:43AM
(#43269004)
The reason this makes panspermia less likely is that the panspermia hypothesis would prefer to put the point at which all amino acids become L-amino acids before arrival on Earth, whereas the evidence is that the amino acids on this asteroid is before that point.
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Re:Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed
by roxolotl on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @03:30PM
(#43271904)
That makes sense. I’m just thinking statistically though. All we’ve proven is that some asteroids have R-amino acids. If it’s a 50/50 shot you could easily find a dozen R asteroids because it starts to look really bad for it being a 50/50 split.
I guess the reason it makes things more likely is because homochirality happens so aggressively that finding right handed molecules at all drastically reduces the odds of left.