A new study suggests that comets may “bounce” around the universe, carrying the essential ingredients to create life on alien worlds. Scientists suspect that comets may have delivered the organic ingredients necessary to cook up life on Earth. 

If their theory is correct, it could help narrow down the search for exoplanets that have the correct conditions for a comet to deliver the building blocks of life. 

Comets go around the Sun in a highly elliptical orbit. They can spend hundreds and thousands of years out in the depths of the solar system before they return to Sun at their perihelion. 

Comets leave a trail of debris behind them that can lead to meteor showers on Earth. For instance, the Perseid meteor shower occurs every year between August 9 and 13 when Earth passes through the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle.

Scientists at Cambridge University propose that comets may “bounce” around the universe, carrying the essential ingredients to create life on alien worlds. If their theory is correct, it could help narrow down the search for exoplanets that have the correct conditions for a comet to deliver the building blocks of life

comet, Any of a class of small icy objects orbiting the Sun and developing diffuse gaseous envelopes and often long glowing tails when near the Sun. They are distinguished from other objects in the solar system by their composition, hazy appearance, and elongated orbits. Most comets originate in the Oort cloud or in the Kuiper belt. Other bodies’ gravity can alter their orbits, causing them to pass close to the Sun. Short-period comets return in 200 years or less, others in thousands of years or not at all. A comet typically consists of a small, irregular nucleus, often described as a “dirty snowball,” with dust and other materials frozen in water mixed with volatile compounds. When one nears the Sun, the heat vaporizes its surface, releasing gases and dust particles, which form a cloud (coma) around the nucleus. Material in the coma may be pushed away from the Sun by its radiation and the solar wind, forming one or more tails. Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through dust left by the passage of a comet.

Halley’s Comet, or Comet Halley, First comet whose return was predicted, proving that at least some comets are members of the solar system. Edmond Halley showed in 1705 that comets seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682 were really one comet, and he predicted its return in 1758. Later calculations identified it with the large, bright comet seen during the Norman Conquest (and depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry) and with other comet sightings at intervals of about 76 years, the first in 240 BC. The only easily seen comet that returns in a single lifetime, it approached Earth twice in the 20th century (1910, 1985–86). Its nucleus is roughly 9 mi (15 km) across.

Comets may have brought water and organic compounds, the building blocks of life, to the early Earth and other parts of the solar system. However, it seems highly unlikely that life in the form of biological cells began in comets. 

Comets can carry many of the key building blocks for life, including amino acids and other organic compounds. Whether they can deliver those building blocks to any given planet may depend on the arrangement of its broader system. 

Comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock, and ices. They range from a few miles to tens of miles wide. As they orbit closer to the Sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet.

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