The “building blocks of life” (amino acids) not only occur there, but they even grow together into short chains (peptides) under the hostile conditions prevailing in space, as laboratory experiments by physicist Tilmann Märk and colleagues at the University of Innsbruck report.
The researchers showed that small clusters of glycine molecules (the simplest amino acid) tend to polymerize when energy is input. This means that two glycine amino acids will join together to form a double link (dipeptide) if they are given the energy to do so. Even the reaction to a tripeptide was proven – without any contact with dust or ice.
