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Meteors May Have Brought Building Blocks of Life to Earth
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
A massive bombardment of meteorites billions of years ago could have brought in enough water and carbon dioxide to jump-start the chemistry that allowed the Earth to develop into the garden spot of our solar system.
By studying meteorites and other evidence from this bombardment, a team of researchers at Imperial College, England, has calculated that the meteorites could have carried in as many as 10 billion tons of water vapor and carbon dioxide to the young Earth every year for millions of years.
That amount of water, about 10 times the daily outflow of the Mississippi River, and carbon dioxide would have been enough to set off a greenhouse effect that eventually made the Earth warm and wet enough to harbor plants and creatures. Meanwhile, the other planets entered existences of torture by fire and ice.
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