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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

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hugh3·

Before anyone gets too excited:

Amino acids on a comet, 2009: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17628-found-first-amin...

Amino acids in interstellar space, 2002: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2558-amino-acid-found-...

and a few more examples exist if you google "amino acids in space".

We've known about amino acids in space for a long time. Amino acids exist all over the damn place.

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I agree about not getting too excited. But to be precise in this case they are talking about nucleobases [1] which are building blocks of DNA. Amino acids [2] are building blocks of proteins.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleobase [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid

Not left over smudges from the former inhabitants of planet Krypton? Ah shucks :-).

The interesting point here was the nuceobases (vs the amino acids). Mars water should be interesting to look at.

And of course a sample return mission to Ceres would be interesting as long as we didn't open the capsule in an uncontrolled environment :-).

Are you concerned about the capsule getting contaminated, or about Earth getting contaminated? I'd bet on the Earth's microbes to dominate.

Yes, but what's interesting about this are the mechanisms of formation and delivery. We have evidence of how these things were formed in space and then delivered to Earth. It's not little green men, but a piece of the puzzle. I think it's pretty damn cool.

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