Earthlings are a carbon-based form of life.
No plant or animal can survive without it. So the recent discovery, by Harvard researchers, of strange forms of carbon in their laboratory and in nearby space is of more than passing interest. It's the same organic chemistry we know on Earth, but with some exotic variations and twists. The fact that this kind of chemistry is smeared all over our galaxy must inevitably be connected to the origin of life on Earth and, perhaps, elsewhere. We don't have solid facts yet that tie specific carbon molecules in space to the start of life on Earth.