Cometary collisions could easily produce complex molecules
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029136
BBC : Comets have long been viewed as a potential source of the complex molecules that are the building blocks of life. But how those molecules formed is still unclear. Now, Haruna Sugahara of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama and Koichi Mimura of Nagoya University have shown that complex molecules can form when comets and planets collide. The researchers created mixtures of ice, amino acids, and rocks similar to the mix of materials in comets and struck the material with projectiles. The energy of the collisions triggered chemical reactions that created peptides, chains of amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins.
