While life on Earth is relatively new, geologically speaking, the ingredients that combined to form it might be much older than once thought. According to research published in ACS Central Science, the simplest amino acid, carbamic acid, could have formed alongside stars or planets within interstellar ices.

It has long been hypothesized that one of the building blocks for life, amino acids, could have formed during reactions in the “primordial soup” of the early, prebiotic Earth. However, another theory suggests that amino acids could have been carried to the Earth’s surface by meteorites.