Scientists say the 'R' in RNA may be abundant in space

[OGIS]

A small "hmmm..." addressed to the blithe acceptance of Earth-based origin of life theory. Add in the apparent fact that the Universe is lousy with once-thought-rare water, and panspermia is looking a bit more likely. Fred Hoyle is smiling, somewhere.

Question: If I'm getting this right and not reversing things, I think that (all other things being equal) the ratio of the area of a sphere's surface to its volume increases as the sphere gets smaller. (There is less area per cubic measure of the volume.) This would mean that a sphere surface would have a higher tensile strength ratio against the internal pressure of the volume. This makes sense, I think, since the larger the volume (and the longer the cone of pressure from the center to the surface) the greater the interior pressure on each section of surface. So: at the size of a typical protoplasm cell, is the cell wall strong enough to NOT blow out - in the vacuum of space - from the pressure inside the cell? If so, and assuming either nourishment from photon receptors (like plants) or from different elements like methane and sulfure (like black smoker bacteria), then naked life in space would be plausible. (The creature would not breath from lungs, of course; it would have to get an oxidizer by some form of chemical breakdown method... probably from the water molecules that seem to permeate the Universe.)

New research suggests that the sugar ribose - the "R" in RNA - is probably found in comets and asteroids that zip through the solar system and may be more abundant throughout the universe than was previously thought.

The finding has implications not just for the study of the origins of life on Earth, but also for understanding how much life there might be beyond our planet.

Scientists already knew that several of the molecules necessary for life including amino acids, nucleobases and others can be made from the interaction of cometary ices and space radiation. But ribose, which makes up the backbone of the RNA molecule, had been elusive - until now.

The new work, published Thursday in Science, fills in another piece of the puzzle, said Andrew Mattioda, an astrochemist at NASA Ames Research Center, who was not involved with the study.

"If all these molecules that are necessary for life are everywhere out in space, the case gets a lot better that you'll find life outside of Earth," he said.

RNA, which stands for ribonucleic acid, is one of the three macromolecules that are necessary for all life on Earth - the other two are DNA and proteins.

Many scientists believe that RNA is a more ancient molecule than DNA and that before DNA came on the scene, an "RNA world" existed on Earth. However, ribose, a key component in RNA, only forms under specific conditions, and scientists say those conditions were not present on our planet before life evolved. So, where did the ribose in the first RNA strands come from?

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-04-scientists-rna-abundant-space.html#jCp