Perhaps another exciting discovery favoring alien outside our solar system, a new study suggests the Earth received vitamin B3 from somewhere in space.
According to LiveScience, study researchers say an ancient blast on Earth combined the right elements to create vitamin B3, or niacin. Early in the solar system's life, a radioactive blast of ice would have sparked the chemical reaction necessary to produce niacin.
For their study, published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the researchers suggested this chemical cocktail was cooked in space then delivered to Earth via asteroids and comets. Humans do not produce vitamin B3, but it is an important part of any person's diet.
"It is always difficult to put a value on the connection between meteorites and the origin of life; for example, earlier work has shown that vitamin B3 could have been produced non-biologically on ancient Earth, but it's possible that an added source of vitamin B3 could have been helpful," study lead author Karen Smith, of Pennsylvania State University, said in a press release. "Vitamin B3, also called nicotinic acid or niacin, is a precursor to NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), which is essential to metabolism and likely very ancient in origin."
The team of scientists analyzed eight different meteorite samples rich with carbon. With anywhere from 30 to 600 parts-per-billion, the researchers found vitamin B3 levels throughout.
"We discovered a pattern - less vitamin B3 (and other pyridine carboxylic acids) was found in meteorites that came from asteroids that were more altered by liquid water. One possibility may be that these molecules were destroyed during the prolonged contact with liquid water," said Smith. "We also performed preliminary laboratory experiments simulating conditions in interstellar space and showed that the synthesis of vitamin B3 and other pyridine carboxylic acids might be possible on ice grains."
Since radiation is plentiful in space, coming off stars and explosions, the researchers said it could have spurred a chemical reaction. Asteroids and comets are bits of space rocks made up of ice and dust, but they can sometimes be some of the most ancient remnants of the solar system's formation.
The researchers, however, struck down the notion that the vitamin B3 is an indicator of alien life outside our solar system. Further research will aim to determine how vitamin B3 could be created on grains of ice in space.
"We used pyridine-carbon dioxide ice in the initial experiment," said Smith. "We want to add water ice (the dominant component of interstellar ices) and start from simpler organic precursors (building-block molecules) of vitamin B3 to help verify our result."
