http://www.news.gatech.edu/...8/02/17/asteroid-time-capsules-may-help-explain-how-life-started-earth
In popular culture, asteroids play the role of apocalyptic threat, get blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs – and offer an extraterrestrial source for mineral mining.
But for researcher Nicholas Hud, asteroids play an entirely different role: that of time capsules showing what molecules originally existed in our solar system.
Having that information gives scientists the starting point they need to reconstruct the complex pathway that got life started on Earth.
Director of the NSF-NASA Center for Chemical Evolution at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Hud says finding molecules in asteroids provides the strongest evidence
that such compounds were present on the Earth before life formed. Knowing what molecules were present helps establish the initial conditions that led to the formation
of amino acids and related compounds that, in turn, came together to form peptides, small protein-like molecules that may have kicked off life on this planet.