article_snippet: Meteorite impacts, like the one in the illustration above, may have triggered the creation of hydrogen cyanide that scientists have found can create the three basic building blocks of light in reactions powered by sunlight .
article_snippet: the researchers behind the new study claim that meteorite impacts around four billion years ago - known as the Late Heavy Bombardment - could have carried with the researchers behind the new study carbon rich material that reacted with nitrogen in the air to produce an abundance of hydrogen cyanide.
article_snippet: This poisonous gas could then have dissolved in water and undergone a series of chemical reactions, along with hydrogen sulphide, driven by ultraviolet light.
article_snippet: Hydrogen sulphide is thrown out in volcanic eruptions like the one above and may have been a vital ingredient in the formation of the first biological building blocks needed to create living cells, according to new research .
article_snippet: Hydrogen cyanide would have formed in large amounts due to the bombardment of comets raining down on Earth Earth a few hundred million years after Earth formed.
article_snippet: Hydrogen sulphide was also thought to be common on the early Earth - thrown out by volcanic eruptions - while the sun would have provided more than enough ultraviolet light.
highlights_snippet: Scientists tests used hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulphide and ultraviolet light .
  
highlights_snippet: Hydrogen cyanide would have been created by  meteorite debris reacting with the nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere during repeated space impacts .
  
highlights_snippet: Hydrogen sulphide gas was probably thrown out by erupting volcanoes .
  