Scientists Nuke a Fake Comet to Create Ingredients for Life

By cooking up a faux comet, scientists have produced the first formation of a key sugar required for life as we know it. By creating ices similar to those detected by the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, which made the first landing on a comet, scientists were able to produce ribose, a sugar that serves as an important ingredient in RNA, an essential ingredient for life. "There is evidence for an 'RNA world' — an episode of life on Earth during which RNA was the only genetic materi