Extraterrestrial Enigma: Missing Amino Acids In Meteorites

On 3 Nov 2003 17:49:23 GMT, (Ron Baalke)
wrote:

A chief difference, however, was seen by
Mike Engel in his PhD research: Unlike the Miller-Urey experiment which
produced equal amounts of the D and L- amino acids, Murchison tended to have
l-amino acids predominate. The fact that the meteorite was seen falling and
fragments were collected quickly minimized the chances that they were
contaminated by Earth amino acids.

Is it possible the meteorite amino acids could be of exobiological
origin?

The scenario I'm thinking of involves the asteroid belt, and the
material that failed to form a planet. I don't know what was the
largest object that's ever existed in the asteroid belt, but I've seen
one source suggest that about 8 Mars-sized objects might have formed,
before Jupiter's gravity perturbed their orbits enough that they
scattered out of the belt or collided with each other at high enough
velocity to disintegrate. (This idea, if correct, would account for
the differentiation of meteorites into iron, stone and carbonaceous
chondrites.)

Now, a Mars-sized object can retain air, water and volcanic heat for a
significant length of time. We don't know how long it took life to
evolve; perhaps only a few million years. Could some of these objects
have remained in stable orbits long enough for life to have evolved
and spread before they were destroyed in collisions? Then the chiral
amino acids might be the remains of life from primordial
proto-planets.

Of course, the above is fairly wild speculation, but I'm curious - is
there a chance it could be correct?

--
"Sore wa himitsu desu."
To reply by email, remove
the small snack from address.
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace