{"id":818439,"date":"2026-10-30T07:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T07:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818439\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T07:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T07:50:12","slug":"space-breakthrough-as-new-study-disproves-long-held-theory-about-the-origin-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818439\/","title":{"rendered":"Space breakthrough as new study disproves long-held theory about the origin of life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lead author Dr Richard Anslow from Cambridge&#8217;s Institute of Astronomy: &#8220;It&#8217;s kind of a romantic idea, but our results suggest it&#8217;s highly unlikely.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The team&#8217;s computer simulations centred on hydrogen cyanide, a compound composed of hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen, three elements fundamental to all living organisms. <\/p>\n<p>HCN is particularly significant because the energy stored in its carbon-nitrogen triple bond makes it highly reactive and capable of driving the creation of complex molecules, including sugars, fats, and nucleobases, the building blocks of DNA.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the modelling revealed that even if every scrap of cometary material had been deposited into Earth&#8217;s oceans simultaneously, the resulting concentration would reach just 0.75 micromoles per litre. <\/p>\n<p>This is roughly 13,000 times below the threshold required to trigger the formation of key life-giving compounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lead author Dr Richard Anslow from Cambridge&#8217;s Institute of Astronomy: &#8220;It&#8217;s kind of a romantic idea, but our&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-818439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}