[HN Gopher] Organic molecule compositions in samples of asteroid...
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Organic molecule compositions in samples of asteroid Ryugu
Author : perihelions
Score : 90 points
Date : 2023-02-25 09:49 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (global.jaxa.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (global.jaxa.jp)
| apienx wrote:
| > "The diversity of soluble organic molecules detected in the
| Ryugu samples is comparable to the diversity of organic molecules
| found in carbonaceous meteorites. However, the molecular
| distribution of low-molecular-weight organic compounds is
| relatively low, similar to the distribution of organic matter in
| carbonaceous meteorites that have been strongly affected by
| aqueous alteration. This is also consistent with mineralogical
| characteristics revealed by the initial analysis teams."
|
| So there's a class of meteorites, carbonaceous chondrites that
| have up to 3% of organic matter. 5% of all meteorites belong to
| this class. The Hayabusa2 samples have the same level of organic
| matter.
|
| Cool. A new rock. But the cooler part is that these rocks were
| likely exposed to water.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> But the cooler part is that these rocks were likely exposed
| to water.
|
| Water is everywhere in space. Only amongst the inner planets is
| it baked away by the heat of the sun. Out past Jupiter, most
| every rock seems to have substantial water content. Most of
| that is ice, but any source of heat turns that into water for a
| time. Two asteroids colliding would produce some liquid water
| in their interiors, long enough for some organic chemistry to
| happen.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Umm, I don't know but would guess water-ice sublimes over
| time in a vacuum.
| idlewords wrote:
| The rings of Saturn are almost entirely little chunks of
| water ice, and they are stable over many hundreds of
| millions of years. Cold ice (below about 150K) has a very
| low vapor pressure.
| perardi wrote:
| Related reading: the Murchison meteorite.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_meteorite
|
| It's an extensively researched meteorite that is just full of
| organic molecules.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Thought experiment, anyone wonder what would happen if we started
| space mining, and all of a sudden we started finding fossils in
| asteroids? Like they're bits from ancient worlds that had life on
| them? Perhaps feasible in a universe just 15 billion years old,
| that things recycle and get moved around, and on a long enough
| time scale parts of earth could be asteroids in a far off galaxy,
| that isn't the milky way, long after our sun supernova's.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| [flagged]
| peteradio wrote:
| [flagged]
| prox wrote:
| There are pretty free range as well!
| madaxe_again wrote:
| The fluorescence test showing racemic mixtures of the enantiomers
| is maybe the most significant datum - we kinda knew they had a
| whole bunch of hydrocarbons from distant observation
| spectrography, but the demonstration of an abiotic origin is a -
| for panspermia and a + for abiogenesis.
| fit2rule wrote:
| [dead]
| doitLP wrote:
| How can we be sure it's of abiotic origin?
| dvh wrote:
| >left and right structures were present at approximately 1:1
| nicolaslegland wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6027462/ TL;DR:
| Biotic implies L-chirality. Ryugu exhibits balanced
| chirality.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Earth biotic origin implies L, I think it is theoretically
| possible if life developed elsewhere that other enzymes may
| preference R. AFAIK our enzymes are generally conserved
| throughout life
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Indeed. Asimov's "Left hand of the electron" has an essay
| which explores and explains why life inevitably ends up
| with a chiral preference.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| "Biotic implies L-chirality" on this planet sure, but it's
| one data point to extrapolate from. It's not enought.
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