Asteroids, the Spark of Life

What are the origins of life on Earth? This is one of the most fundamental scientific questions of our time. Since the 1970s, scientists have been divided between two main theories. According to the first, the building blocks of life were synthesised on Earth, at the bottom of the ocean, around volcanic hot springs called hydrothermal vents. However, other evidence also suggests that the building blocks needed for the emergence of life may have originated extraterrestrially, and may have been delivered to Earth by meteorites and comets that struck the Earth on a massive scale 3.9 billion years ago. For scientists, this second possibility requires a profound paradigm shift, forcing them to reconsider the role of these apparently destructive collisions. Could it be that these potentially cataclysmic impacts were also the origin of the first forms of life on Earth?