Scientists hoping to find clues about the origin on life on earth have been analysing dust collected by a robot space probe from an asteroid named Bennu. When asteroid debris falls onto the earth in the form of meteorites it is heated and contaminated by chemicals in the atmosphere. However, the Bennu sample was contained in a sealed container and protected from the earth’s atmosphere during its re-entry and landing, and then studied in carefully controlled laboratory conditions. Therefore, the material should be a good representation of what has formed elsewhere in the solar system.
The researchers found a complex mixture of organic (carbon containing) molecules including 14 of the 20 amino acids used in proteins on earth and all five bases that form part of DNA and RNA molecules.
The amino acids were of special interest because amino acids come in one form or two possible mirror image forms – commonly referred to as left and right-handed. Amino acids in living things are almost exclusively left-handed and the research team were hoping the asteroid amino acids would have this left-handed dominance. However, they were disappointed to find the asteroid amino acids were an equal mix of left and right-handed molecules.
According to Nature News, “Now, researchers have to go back to the drawing board to understand how life might have been seeded on Earth.” One of the research team, Daniel Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, commented: “I felt a little bit disappointed at first, like it invalidated 20 years of my research, But this is why we explore — to learn new things.”
The asteroid material also contains a large variety of salts and minerals, which scientists suggest are the remains of salty brines formed on the planetary building blocks that formed the early solar system. According to Nature News, “analysis of these salts helps to establish the history of water in the early Solar System.” The current theory of planet formation claims the inner planets, including earth, acquired their water from icy planetesimals formed in the outer solar system, which then migrated inwards.
References: Nature News 29 January 2025; Nature Podcast 29 January 2025; ScienceDaily 29 January 2025; Nature Astronomy, 29 January 2025; DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02472-9
Editorial Comment: The amino acid problem has been an issue ever since evolutionary scientists have tried to explain the origin of life by chemical reactions alone. All their chemical evolution experiments, along with analysis of chemicals found on meteorites, have produced a mix of left and right handed amino acids. When molecules that have mirror image forms are produced by random chemical reaction there will be an equal mix of both forms. To get one form exclusively requires deliberate intervention by an intelligent manipulator who is outside the system and sets it up to only make the desired form. This has been confirmed by decades of chemical research culminating in 2001 with the award of a Nobel prize to three scientists who developed a method for doing this.
The origin of earth’s water also continues to be a contentious issue as long as evolutionary cosmologists try to explain how the earth could have formed from a mass of dust and particles too hot for liquid water but we live in a world covered in water. According to this theory water had to be delivered to the earth by meteorites after it has cooled down enough for the water to remain on the earth as liquid.
The scientists who studied this recently acquired asteroid dust, along with many others, are doomed to disappointment as long as they ignore the description from the Creator of how the earth and the other solar system objects were formed, and how life came onto the earth. We suggest they take up the challenge to “go back to the drawing board to understand how life might have been seeded on Earth” by reading Genesis. God’s Word tells us that the earth was covered in water when it was created, and after some manipulation by the Creator it was ready to be inhabited by living things. God then created living organisms made up of cells designed to produce left-handed amino acids.
Creation Research News 13 February 2025
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