How many species of living things are there on Earth? Birds, whales, lizards, monkeys... According to scientists, the number of species we are currently registered has reached 2.33 million, and the number of species that really exists on the earth may be more than 10 million.
There are thousands of species on earth, where did they first come from? And how did it come about? This question has long plagued paleontologists. Recently, a new study in the authoritative journal Nature Communications found that Earth species, including humans, may date back to three meteorites that fell on Earth billions of years ago.
First, the life of the earth originates from "alien visitors"?
It is reported that the three meteorites fell in 1950 in Morrie, Kentucky, in 1969 in Murchson, Victoria, Australia, and in 2000 in Lake Tagish, British Columbia, Canada, so they were also named Morrie meteorite, Murchson meteorite and Tajish Lake meteorite.
The study, jointly led by Hokkaido University and NASA in Japan, grinded the sample meteorite into a powder and used an extremely sensitive analysis technique similar to "cold extraction" to detect molecules at the trillionth level, and finally extracted two nuclear base organic compounds from the meteorite , cytosine and thymine.
Before we can understand these two substances, we first need to understand where life on Earth originated. The composition of life on Earth is inseparable from two kinds of molecules, namely the "DNA molecule" that carries genetic instructions and the "RNA molecule" that controls the activity of genes, and it is precisely because of their genetic replication, passed down from generation to generation, that a colorful earth life system is constructed.
DNA and RNA are made up of five nucleobases: guanine, cytosine, thymine, uracil, and adenine. Since the 1960s, scientists have successively found adenine, guanine and uracil in meteorites, and this study is the first time that cytosine and thymine have been found in meteorites. Not only that, as a representative of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, scientists have also found more than 100 amino acids in morrison meteorites.
There is a hypothesis in biology called "pansyntheism", which holds that "earth life" was not born from earth, but through meteorite movement, or brought by comets or cosmic dust. Previously considered pseudoscience, the doctrine is likely to be justified today.
Danny Glavin, one of the paper's authors, said the available evidence shows that the conjecture that life came from outer space is not unfounded.
SECOND, the "code of life" hidden in the comet dust
Of course, this is not the first time scientists have discovered the mystery of life in space, in June 2004, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, NASA's Star detector also found a compound called pyrroquinoline quinone (PQQ) in comet 2 "Wild" 2 stardust, which scientists speculated was produced by cosmic rays from the mineral surface.
In 2017, scientists Kazuhiro Nishihara, also from Japan, also found in an animal experiment that after feeding PQQ at a concentration of 10-100 nM, the content of mitochondrials that inhibit biological aging in the body was monitored to increase significantly, and the key to its improvement was to activate the longevity protein SIRT family.
In August 2020, the "Time School" of the anti-aging science popularization team of Fudan University in China published the research in the "Can Comet Dust Extend the Plateau?" PQQ from the Stars" article. As early as a year ago, the Japanese research team had already put the substance into the age-locking technology "Palovis Pro".
It is reported that this lock age technology "Palovie Pro", which has repeatedly entered the List of Hot Words in Beijing & East, not only contains PQQ but also adds a variety of biological enzymes, which can more effectively intervene in indicators such as mitochondria recognized by scientists, making the body state tend to be younger. Even Li Jiacheng, who has been on the richest list for many years, is also overjoyed after a light taste, spending more than $25 million to lay out the results, and the current high rating rate of Palovi Pro in Beijing-East remains above 96%, and he has to admire the brain holes of scientists.
Third, the material in the meteorite actually comes from the earth?
Reports of scientists discovering DNA components in meteorites have attracted public attention, and some of them have asked: These three meteorites have been on Earth for decades, so is it possible that this genetic material was contaminated after the meteorite fell on Earth?
In fact, this is not possible. First of all, the paper has clarified that Japanese scientists have not only extracted the surface material of the meteorite, but "extracted" its internal material; the other three meteorites have been very closely protected since they were discovered, and will not be in contact with the outside world except for necessary scientific research; finally, this is not the first time that humans have found pyrimidine in meteorites, and scientists have also found that they can be naturally synthesized in extremely cold interstellar space, but this time it was first discovered in meteorites billions of years ago.
Therefore, whether the formation of life came from Earth or outer space remains a mystery. Of course, we ordinary people do not have to feel anxious about this, after all, there are still many meteorite blocks in existence, and one day in the future, scientists will really solve our "mystery of the origin of life".