New planets: Our concept of life is ever expanding

We’ve all seen the headlines: new planets discovered. Well, we all already guessed there would be more. What, you really thought that ours was the only solar system when there are billions of suns out there in our galaxy alone? Obviously there are other planets.

The problem is, we could not see them or even radar an image that they were there, we just sort of guessed, did predictive science calculations. They must be there.

And indeed they are. We’ve plotted 12 so far for sure, with maybe 13,789 others needing confirmation. And we’re just looking at our nearest solar systems with about a half-dozen billion stars (suns) to go.

We found planets that are bigger, more dense, farther from their sun, closer to their sun. In fact, nature doesn’t ever work perfectly the same way twice. The infinite possibilities of planets are exceeded only by the resultant infinite possibilities of life on any of those planets.

For example, without the moon being exactly that size and that far away, there would probably be no life (as we know it) on earth. The moon is the controller of the tides and the weather, the great Waring blender of the soup of life on earth. Without that mixing, could life have emerged? And if it did, would it have been anything like the same?

These and other questions face us here on our home planet and, of course, cause great thinkers to ponder the chances on other planets yet to be visited. One thing all scientists are sure of: There is life out there.

How do they know? They have found seeding devices. They are called comets. In the debris coming off the tail of two comets (Shoemaker-Levy and Wild2) the instruments aboard spacecraft found the signature of a building block of life: amino acids.

All genetic code that we know of is encoded in genetic material (DNA or RNA), which is translated into proteins (amino acid sequences) by living cells. In other words, to have amino acids you have to have DNA or RNA and/or living cells. These form a triangle defining the beginning of life.

What we do not yet know is whether there are living cells or DNA or RNA on these comets, but the suspicion is that there must be. In 2008 the Mars Polar Lander returned definite amino acid signatures. So something is seeding one heck of a lot of space with the building blocks of life.

Of the only two comets we’ve been able to catch, 100 percent have particles of amino acids. How many comets are there? Three thousand six hundred forty-eight that we have spotted and mapped. And those are all in our solar system, one tiny star on the outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy (with billions of stars), one galaxy amongst billions of galaxies.

Can living cells survive in the vacuum of space? One of the moon astronauts recovered a pre-flight sneezed-on camera in 1969 that had spent three years on the moon’s surface; in the extreme hot and cold, always in a vacuum. Bacteria from the sneeze survived the three years and were successfully revived when brought back to earth.

And then we come to the scientists’ dream, to get particles back to earth to study. Galileo, launched by the Europeans, tested the tail debris from Shoemaker-Levy and received the unmistakable signature of amino acids.

Previously, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft passed by comet Wild2 and collected dust samples from the comet’s tail while it took images of the comet’s nucleus (where they want to collect samples in the future). Years later, on re-entry the parachutes didn’t work and the spacecraft sample container crash-landed in Utah as a fiery ball … and yet the samples survived.

Just recently, the Japanese had a mission that landed twice on an asteroid called Itokawa (well, not a comet, but free-floating space debris beyond Mars). The sample compartment first opened provided the first non-earth (and non-moon) particles that showed combinations of minerals unlike anything found on earth.

The second compartment will be opened sometime soon. It is expected to have more material. If they find amino acids there, on one lonely chunk of planet debris from beyond Mars, then we can be pretty darned sure there is life everywhere in space.

Until then, what we do know for certain is that comets are busy seeding amino acids everywhere they go.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.

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