The 'Stardust' probe returns to Earth this Sunday bearing samples of a comet. One of the questions about the material comets are made of is whether or not they contain the pre-cursor molecules of life in the form of amino acids (one theory of life origin has it that cometary bombardment 'seeded' the Earth with these amino acid chains, and their involvement with the early Earth environment eventually leads to 'life').
All in all, pretty mindblowing stuff - not that you'd know it from the ho-hum news cycle, but I digress.
Here's a shot of the comet when the probe used to collect material, impacted on the surface.
Are we some clever monkeys or what?
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