MOSCOW, July 17 Asteroids may well be carriers, if not of living organisms, then of molecular compounds from which new forms of life can subsequently arise, a senior researcher at the Institute of Applied Astronomy (IPA) of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in an interview Nikolay Zheleznov.
«Of course, nothing can be denied,» said Zheleznov, answering the relevant question.
He clarified that so far there is one hundred percent confirmation there is no fact that even one-celled life was introduced with the help of asteroids.
Nevertheless, according to him, on many fragments of meteorites not traces of life were found, but its «building blocks» — amino acids. This suggests that complex molecular compounds can exist on asteroids.
Moreover, Zheleznov recalled that one of the hypotheses of the origin of life on Earth implies that water was brought to us by comets. Probably, this water also contained molecular compounds from which the first unicellular organisms were formed.
Read the full text of Nikolai Zheleznov's interview >>