Mission scientists behind the comet hunting Rosetta probe just announced that they have discovered some essential building blocks of life, making this a crucial discovery about how life flourished on Earth.

Scientists from the European Space Agency now claim to have strong evidence about how life began on Earth after asteroids and comets smashed into the surface of the planet and created ideal conditions for life. In this new study, ESA engineers revealed that the Rosetta spacecraft detected some organic compounds from the cloud of gas that is enshrouding comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

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These organic compounds are known as amino acid glycine which are essential for living organisms to produce proteins were already detected in the past from the Wild 2 comet back in 2006. This new discovery also confirms the presence of amino acid glycine in comet 67P, which is enough evidence that this is not coincidence. Unfortunately, the organic specimen from the Wild 2 comet became contaminated when it crashed into the Utah desert.

According to principal investigator Kathrin Altwegg from ESA's ROSINA (Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis), this remarkable discovery of glycine in more than one comet reveals that neither Wild 2 nor comet 67P are exceptions, suggesting that these are important implications about the search for life on other exoplanets and star systems.

Altwegg adds that amino acids can be found everywhere which means that life can possibly start in any place in the universe. Apart from these organic compounds, mission scientists also detected phosphorous from the comet's dust trail which is also an important element that is required by all living organisms.

In September the Rosetta mission will finally come to an end, after two years investigating the unique terrain and composition of this comet, that provided crucial data about how the solar system evolved.

TagsESA, rosetta probe, comet 67P, building blocks of life comet rosetta, rosetta comet 67P