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Scientists have found tiny bubbles of organic material that may be older than the sun, in a meteorite that landed on a frozen lake in northwestern British Columbia.

NASA researchers say the ancient globules add weight to the theory that space rocks delivered the raw materials required for the evolution of the first life forms on Earth.

"The globules we found in the meteorite aren't alive, but can be an ingredient for it," said Keiko Nakamura-Messenger, who works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We may be one step closer to knowing where our ancestors came from."

She and her colleagues released a detailed chemical analysis of the microscopic globules found within the charcoal-like space rocks that landed near the British Columbia-Yukon border in January, 2000.

The bubbles contain rare types of hydrogen and nitrogen that are not found on Earth. They were formed in intense cold, -260 C, Dr. Nakamura-Messenger said, either in the outer reaches of our nascent solar system or in the giant cloud of cosmic dust and gas that gave birth to our sun and the planets that orbit it.

In today's edition of the journal Science, they say these kinds of globules were likely found in many of the meteorites that bombarded the young Earth. They may have provided the building blocks for life and the perfect protected bubble-like environment for it to form. There were millions of globules in the grape-like piece of rock she studied.

No one is sure how life first evolved on Earth. But the general scientific theory is that compounds that were either already here -- or that arrived on space rocks -- eventually combined and gave rise to a single-celled organism.

Scientists have reported finding these kinds of globules in other meteorites for years, but it was unclear whether they were extraterrestrial material, or the result of human or other earthly contamination.

Dr. Nakamura-Messenger was fulsome in her praise for Jim Brook, the resort operator with a scientific background who knew not to touch the dark chunks of rock he spotted while driving his pickup across the lake. A week earlier, local residents had reported seeing a multicoloured fireball streak to ground, and smelling a foul chemical odour in the air.

She said that if Mr. Brook had touched the space rocks, even a tiny amount of oil from his fingers would have made it more difficult to determine the origins of the ancient bubbles that lay within.

"He did a great, great job and we appreciate that."

He was well rewarded for his efforts.

Earlier this year, he sold the meteorite fragments for $750,000. They will remain in Canada, at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

The initial analysis showed the fragments to be laden with stardust, minerals and organic compounds, said Alan Hildebrand, a meteorite expert at the University of Calgary. It is perhaps the most primitive meteorite ever recovered, a relic from the early moments of our solar system.

The discovery of the organic globules, he said, helps scientists understand more about how a cold, molecular cloud collapses to form a solar system like ours.

He likens the discovery to archeologists finding reeds, wood or grass used by an ancient culture - the kind of material that normally doesn't survive for millions of years.

"These organic globules are some of those things we thought were destroyed, but in fact, they aren't."

Peter Brown, a planetary scientist at the University of Western Ontario, was also on the team that studied the meteorite after it landed. He and his colleagues sent a small sample to NASA, which is what Dr. Nakamura-Messenger and her colleagues used for their research.

But the Americans had access to expensive new equipment that can analyze the chemical composition of tiny structures like the globules, Dr. Brown said.

That analysis shows that the globules are among the oldest material ever found. The bulk of the meteorite is believed to be roughly 4.5 billion years old. The globules could be even more ancient, material that was incorporated into the rock when it formed.

The most pristine chunks are now sitting in a freezer at the University of Alberta, said Chris Herd, assistant professor in the department of Earth and atmospheric sciences.

Many of the pieces look different than the one the NASA scientists examined, he said, and may contain their own secrets.