ONE of the essential ingredients of life on Earth may have arrived here in iron meteorites. These meteorites would merely have had to react with water to release phosphorus, an element crucial to the working of living cells.
Carbon-rich meteorites raining down on Earth about 4 billion years ago are thought to have supplied the hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen needed for life to get started. But such meteorites are low in phosphorus, which is the fifth most common element in living cells and a vital component of DNA and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), cells’ main energy-carrying molecule. How life got…
