New Discovery Indicates Building Blocks of Life Common Throughout the Universe

Ok, so today marks the end of my blog's first week of existence, and since everything I have done up until this point has been film related (a tendency which will undoubtedly continue), today I'm going to just talk about an amazing new scientific discovery.

This morning I came across a Reuters article touting the fact that the amino acid glycine has been found in the tail of a comet. While this might not sound completely bad-ass, I assure you, it is. Glycine is one of the critical building blocks of life, and it's existence in a comet not only gives us clues as to how life may have first developed on this planet, it also significantly lessens the chance that we are alone in the universe. After all, a comet's orbit will take it throughout the galaxy, so these building blocks could end up anywhere.

In the article, Carl Pitcher, the director of NASA Astrobiology Institute in California, says, "The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare."

So today, while you're reading news about partisan politics, celebrity gossip, or whatever, just remember that we have come one step closer to confirming the existence of alien life, and that, my friends, is pretty damn cool.