"The discovery confirms that some of the building blocks of life were delivered to the early Earth from space."
Surely that should be "could have been delivered". The article says that the C13 count was different from Earth collected samples. Where's the causality?
Indeed, it turns out to be pretty easy to make amino acids, and they're everywhere. Take hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water, zap it with lightning, and you get amino acids.
It sounds like they aren't even sure where the amino acid came from. From the article:
"With only about 100 billionths of a gram of glycine to study, the researchers were able to measure the relative abundance of its carbon isotopes. It contained more carbon-13 than that found in glycine that forms on Earth, proving that Stardust's glycine originated in space."
Does anyone know how they can know that space glycine should have more C13 than earth glycine?
I suspect there argument does something like: if it has less than or equals to the amount of C13 as glycine on Earth then we can't rule out that it's contamination. But since it has more C13 than from Earth it must be from somewhere else.
Surely that should be "could have been delivered". The article says that the C13 count was different from Earth collected samples. Where's the causality?