Vitamin B3, considered one of the nutrients essential to human life, likely didn't originate on Earth.  

That's the theory of researchers from Pennsylvania State University, working in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in an effort to better understand what spawned life on the Blue Planet.

New findings suggest vitamin B3 was delivered by asteroids during the planet's early days.

"It is always difficult to put a value on the connection between meteorites and the origin of life; for example, earlier work has shown that vitamin B3 could have been produced non-biologically on ancient Earth, but it's possible that an added source of vitamin B3 could have been helpful," Karen Smith from Penn State, said in a NASA news release. "Vitamin B3, also called nicotinic acid or niacin ... is essential to metabolism and likely very ancient in origin."

The researchers reached the out-of-this-world conclusions by examining samples of "eight different carbon-rich meteorites," otherwise designated as "CM-2 type carbonaceous chondrites," the news release said. The team discovered every one of the meteorites carried levels of B3, ranging from 30 to 600 parts-per-billion.

"We discovered a pattern," Smith said. "Less vitamin B3 was found in meteorites that came from asteroids that were more altered by liquid water. One possibility may be that these molecules were destroyed during the prolonged contact with liquid water."

The researchers "also performed preliminary laboratory experiments simulating conditions in interstellar space and showed that the synthesis of vitamin B3 and other pyridine carboxylic acids might be possible on ice grains," she said.

It's believed a dense cloud filled with dust and ice grains collapsed on itself. After that happened, clumps of different types of sediment are believed to have combined to form moon-sized objects which eventually could have formed planets.

It was futher deduced the radiation from nearby stars and other powerful objects could have spurred chemical reactions in nebulae leading to the creation of vitamin B3.

"Non-biological chemistry tends to produce a wide variety of molecules, basically everything permitted by the materials and conditions present," said the news release. But, "life makes only the molecules it needs. If contamination from terrestrial life was the source of the vitamin B3 in the meteorites, then only the vitamin should have been found, not the other, related molecules."