Researchers made the staggering claim after "proving" that ribose, the basic sugar from which much of our DNA is composed, is able to form on a comet. Scientists from the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, and the Institut de Chimie de Nice, claim to have discovered that the nucleic acids that make up our DNA, are formed primarily from ribose, and therefore may not be originally from Earth. At the formation of our solar system, the young Sun was surrounded by a circumstellar disc of gas and dust. Planets then formed by aggregation of these small, frozen bodies that met violently and merged, bringing many chemical compounds. Researchers simulated these conditions to create a synthetic comet. They said as the synthetic comet "warmed", as though it were nearing the Sun, ribose and a similarly structured family of sugars were detected. A spokesman for the research said: "It was previously thought that ribose was the original sugar and precursor to DNA, yet the research exposed at least