Life on Earth is the consequence of what can only be characterized as cosmic teleportation, according to a group of scientists who just released a study. Humanity has long attempted to unravel the enigma of how life began on our planet. But what if we’re just here now because the cosmos is deceiving us?
If we go back far enough in time to the birth of biology on our planet, we’ll find ourselves in the primordial soup through which our forefathers sprang. For any of this to ooze its way out from the soup and through the future, though, the basic building ingredients of life had to be there. So, where did amino acids come from and how did they end up on Earth? Our genesis narrative began in space, according to the study team, which includes experts from Max Planck Institute as well as Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
“The creation of isomeric polyglycine monomers (aminoketene molecules) is demonstrated experimentally when carbon atoms condense here on surfaces of cold solid particles (cosmic dust).”
To put it another way, the researchers created complicated amino acids in such a space-like environment. This is noteworthy because it has long been assumed that life could only exist on Earth due to its close closeness to the sun.
That does not necessarily alter as a result of this new research. Life flourishes on our planet because of its unique features. However, if amino acids, the fundamental building blocks for life, can form complex chains there in the nothingness of space, likely, the cosmos is virtually overflowing with life’s potential.
Getting these building blocks to develop at frigid temperatures, on the other hand, is no simple task. To begin, you must push the limits of chemistry by creating amino acids that could develop in a waterless environment. Then you must abandon the principles of physics to overcome what appears to be an insurmountable obstacle. Rather than providing extra energy to the atoms, the cosmos teleport them across the barrier and think it never happened. This is a strange quantum phenomenon known as “tunneling.”
“Tunneling is a bad word since it brings up pictures of a particle piercing a wall. However, there seems to be no hole, tunnel, or another form of entrance. Instead, we must employ the same unit of measurement that quantum physics employs: probability. A particle may be thought of as an oscillating wave, with the amplitude indicating the likelihood of finding it at a given location. This wave does not cease abruptly when it hits a barrier. Instead, it continues within and on the other part of the barrier, but at a lower amplitude.”
Wrapping Up
In essence, life survives on Earth because the cosmos permits particles to glitch through boundaries like individuals in a poorly-modeled video game world. The amino acids that make up our bodies were most likely generated in space under bizarre conditions before being welded into cosmic masses consisting of strange organics.
Quantum tunneling may sound like something scientists have made up when they can’t figure out what happened, but it’s a well-known phenomenon. For example, the sun only shines when enough randomized particles tunnel through their energy barriers to perform the chemical processes that keep it blazing. Life, or at most its constituent parts, may not be as scarce as scientists long believed. Unfortunately for us, it appears that planets capable of supporting it already exist.