Key Component of Earth Life Found in Comet

An amino acid necessary to the construction of proteins, and therefore life on Earth, has been found in a comet that passes through our solar system, Space.com reports. Glycine was found in samples picked up by a NASA spacecraft in 2004. The discovery suggests that life’s building blocks could have been “delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts,” a researcher says. (More comet stories.)