A 30-year-old meteorite has been recently re-examined and bears signs of an alien protein - which might prove life outside our planet.
Acfer 086 fell from the sky in Algeria back and has traces of hemolithin protein which contains iron, and lithium, two molecules that are essential to life, the Express reports.
The protein is believed to have been created 4.6 billion years ago.
Meteorites containing hemolithin could play a part in seeding life on habitable planets like Earth by delivering proteins to their surfaces.
Julie McGeoch, of the PLEX Corporation, a superconductor X-ray source supplier, said ”It is a good candidate molecule to split water.
“This could consequently “represent a first energy source to chemistry, going on to biochemistry on the surface of planets like Earth in terms of their mass and distance from their sun.
“This could apply to planets throughout the Universe.”
Although hemolithin is structurally similar to terrestrial proteins, the protein’s ratio of hydrogen to isotope deuterium did not match anything found on Earth.
However, the ratio does resemble the composition of comets from the Oort cloud, a sphere of icy planetesimals surrounding the solar system.
Researchers believes this suggests the hemolithin in Acfer 086 may have formed in the proto-solar disk, approximately 4.6 billion years ago.
