A team of scientists led by Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) have found that shock-processing of amino acids and nucleobases tend to form complex macroscale structures on a timescale of about 2 milliseconds. This discovery suggests that the building blocks of life could have polymerized not just on Earth but on other planetary bodies through shock-processing of life-forming molecules. The study also provides further experimental evidence for the ‘threads’ observed in meteorites being due to assemblages of (bio)molecules arising from impact-induced shocks.