Meteorite passengers

Organic chemicals that form part of the DNA needed for life have now been found in meteorites. It means that instead of being cooked up in the primeval soup kitchen of steamy seas, life might have showered down by a sort of meteorite Deliveroo. It is not easy to shake off the notion of life as something miraculous, perhaps shocked into being by Frankenstein forces such as lightning. The way life organises itself is certainly still hard to explain. (If only such marvels of self-organisation were available to Cabinet government...) But if half-constructed elements of living matter had already been run up in interstellar space, it might also have helpfully landed on many another planet, far from ours. At least to gregarious types it will be good news that the chances have increased of our not being alone.