[HN Gopher] Sugars, Gum, Stardust Found in NASA's Asteroid Bennu...
___________________________________________________________________
Sugars, Gum, Stardust Found in NASA's Asteroid Bennu Samples
Author : jnord
Score : 127 points
Date : 2025-12-05 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nasa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nasa.gov)
| voidUpdate wrote:
| The title probably wants the original quotes put back in
| cnnlives86 wrote:
| As I've been reading findings of extraterrestrial organic
| molecules recently, I wonder: do we know there was no
| contamination?
|
| I'm going to be sad if it turns out someone sneezed into it and
| was afraid to tell their manager.
| soco wrote:
| I think the article does a good job clarifying in simple words
| those questions risen by the slightly click-baity title.
| reactordev wrote:
| >"Once soft and flexible, but since hardened, this ancient
| "space gum" consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich
| in nitrogen and oxygen. Such complex molecules could have
| provided some of the chemical precursors that helped trigger
| life on Earth"
|
| That would be some stale big league chew if that were the case.
| By orders of billions of years. Making it the oldest wad of big
| league chew we know of in existence. ;)
| foxyv wrote:
| I'm almost certain that the gum in baseball cards originated
| from the big bang.
| reactordev wrote:
| Not the Big Bang, the Big Ban.
|
| The ban of smoking or tobacco products on TV. Up until the
| 1980s, it was common to see a pitcher up there with a mouth
| full of Kodiak or Chaw. Spitting their nasty tobacco-
| stained split all over the mound.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "I will assume that the experts involved have not taken any
| reasonable precautions, and learned nothing from the past 60
| years of acquired experience in space exploration. I will then
| ask other non-experts in the field if the experts are minimally
| competent or not."
| gblargg wrote:
| I was thinking the same as parent while reading this.
| Mentally this activates the same thinking as on those medical
| tests with a high false positive rate and low incidence, so
| that most positives are false. I'd like to see in the article
| how they rule this out. Ideally I'd like to hear that they
| have measures in place that would allow accidental lapses in
| isolation to fail and they'd still be able to tell that it
| was Earth contamination. It's a reasonable concern and having
| it addressed (with something more satisfying than "they're
| experts, duh!") makes this kind of finding all the more
| interesting.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, it's a concern, but there are numerous other odd
| things in the findings that would not be caused by ground
| contamination such as the amount of stardust contained in
| these samples versus other asteroid samples, or the huge
| amounts of clay/water created minerals found so far.
|
| There are plenty of other articles on the isolation
| procedures they've taken so far to this point including
| putting off opening the container for months because of a
| stripped screw.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| Spot on.
|
| "I'm just asking questions".
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| There are papers covering contamination prevention and
| detection for every stage of the mission. There are papers with
| the designs and intentions before launch and papers with how
| well it went and their specific findings after return.
|
| Here is one sick paper covering some of the clean rooms
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230005897
| tedd4u wrote:
| Awesome -- dozens of the top people in their fields have been
| working on the contamination problem and publishing about it
| for almost two decades. The curation team
| was integrated with mission design and operations from the
| beginning, as early as 2004 (section 3.0). That
| integration allowed curation-specific needs such as
| contamination knowledge to be incorporated into the mission
| design early, when adjustments had minimal cost
| impact. Not only did this early integration inform planning
| for sample characterization, cataloging, allocation,
| and the development of detailed sample handling and
| containment approaches; it was also an investment in the
| longer term needs of the community. Here we describe
| these preparations for OSIRIS-REx, as a reference for sample
| scientists and curators and as a model for future
| sample return missions.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Most organic molecules are different from it's mirrored
| version, and living thing usually produce only one version. But
| inorganic reactions produce an even mix of 50% and 50%. So in
| most cases it's easy to spot.
|
| Also, some sugars or amino acids are very common here and
| others very rare, and the commet probably has another mix.
|
| Also, the ammount of isotopes of the atoms (like Carbon 14) is
| probably different.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > ... gum-like material [...] was likely formed in the early days
| of the solar system
|
| > ... consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in
| nitrogen and oxygen.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Asteroids sound delicious!
| HPsquared wrote:
| Come to think of it, quite a lot of sugary treats have space-
| themed names. Milky Way, Mars, Starburst, Orbit gum... I'm
| sure there are others.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| "Galaxy" (in the UK) is the obvious one. Incidentally, Mars
| bars were named after the Mars family who owned the company
| that made them, not the planet.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And where did the family name originate?
| throw46285 wrote:
| Same place that the family did.
| esafak wrote:
| Is this a yo mama joke?
| a_shoeboy wrote:
| With the battle-axe, sir, with the battle-axe!
| arisAlexis wrote:
| i always wanted to chew some asteroid
| macrolime wrote:
| So it's made of extraterrestrial bubblegum, got it.
| snapdeficit wrote:
| I know one theory proposes comets seeded earth with essential
| materials. But what seeded comets?? It's just chance with extra
| steps, no?
| malfist wrote:
| The big bang did. And following it, supernovae. But there's a
| lot we don't know and science is always advancing!
|
| For example, JWST observed early galaxies are both larger and
| more diverse materials than we expected. Means there's
| something new to learn!
| gaoshan wrote:
| When Carl Sagan said, "The cosmos is within us. We are made of
| star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself" he
| was poetically accurate. The comets are seeded with the remains
| of untold countless exploded stars.
| anechouapechou wrote:
| There's a theory that at the very beginnings of the universe,
| as it cooled down, there was a period where the average
| temperature of the universe was between 0-100o C, meaning the
| whole universe was within a "habitable" temperature range, and
| this could have supercharged the creation of the building
| blocks of life. I think I learned about it on a Veritasium
| video... Maybe someone knows which one? :)
| Retric wrote:
| Veritasium videos are often extremely misleading. In this
| case the cooling universe lacked carbon for these organic
| compounds. Life cares about 0-100c because of water which
| depends on Oxygen would be missing etc.
|
| Just as example in one video he refers to the field outside
| of the wire carrying the energy for electricity, however EM
| waves propagate at the speed of light and fall off at the
| square of distance. Electricity can travel thousands of miles
| without that kind of falloff but doesn't propagate as fast
| because it's electron density in the wires that causes what
| we think of as electricity. He then setups up an antenna and
| ... well you get the idea.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| A "habitable" temperature range, without water and carbon,
| would be entirely meaningless.
| lorenzohess wrote:
| God
| mollusc-engine wrote:
| Wait till you hear about God!
| snapdeficit wrote:
| God is just an extra step. If you assume god existed forever
| and nobody created her, then why not just accept that the
| universe existed forever and cut out the middle-deity.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| >created her
|
| Did you mean 'them' ?
| andrekandre wrote:
| idk, what does god need with a pronoun anyway?
| antonvs wrote:
| It's sorting and mixing. Comets, asteroids, and planets all had
| different factors governing their formation (sorting). When
| comets or asteroids hit planets, you get a mixture of those
| different compositions.
| Mikhail_K wrote:
| What, sugars and gum, but no sandwich wrappers?
| airstrike wrote:
| Bennu is just the perfect brand name for space gummy bears
| troyvit wrote:
| Space gummy tardigrades (because they can survive in space and
| their nickname is "water bear")!
| socketcluster wrote:
| So they found some sticky unidentified alien slime on an
| asteroid... This sounds like something straight out of an alien
| movie.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Who doesn't like sugars and gum? It's the perfect alien
| incubation delivery mechanism! I wonder which will be the first
| scientist to get their chest popped...
| vatsachak wrote:
| Aren't we starting to figure out that life (self-organization) is
| the most likely outcome for planets with our conditions? Maybe
| "our conditions" are also too strong of a requirement
|
| Check out Blaise Arcas on MLST and Nick Land on Dwarkesh. Self
| organization might just be the second law of thermodynamics in
| action
| AIorNot wrote:
| Yeah or Mike Levin
|
| https://youtu.be/5MQq4n2QrNw?si=a7gFLLgQL1Soq0mt
| dylan604 wrote:
| "planets with our conditions" is doing a lot of work here.
|
| how many planets meet that criteria? most of the closest have
| typcially been labeled "super Earths" so their gravity will be
| greater than 1g. what effect will that have?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| If life has adapted to the crushing pressure of deep ocean, I
| have hopes that it can adapt to not-so-crushing gravity. I'm
| sure a lot of our current life could adapt if our gavity was
| doubled. I'd feel sorry for birds, though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Can trees pull water up to the top in >1g situations? At
| >1g, the deep ocean pressure would be that much more.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Quick googling tells me that trees move water internally
| by capillarity, and suction caused by leave evaporation,
| both processes passive.
|
| This puts limits on how high the column of water can be
| raised, yet at 1g we can have monstrous trees like
| sequoias, so maybe many kinds of trees would die, but the
| survivors would just grow shorter.
|
| Abisal creatures, who knows how much pressure they can
| adapt to? They have populated our oceans as deep as they
| can go, the planet has nothing stronger to challenge
| them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| you're focusing on sea dwelling creatures. what about
| land based? would animals get as large? would more
| calories need to be consumed for the extra effort
| necessary to move around in what ever >1g is around? some
| of these are are between 1.9x and 10x the size of earth.
| working twice as hard every day for everything be one
| thing, but 10x the effort?
|
| what would be the atmospheric pressure at >1g? what
| effect would that play as well? not only would you be
| heavier, but you'd have to work harder to breathe.
|
| again, lots of questions about the these differences that
| make it a lot more complicated than the right amino acids
| floating around in space.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Woah, I'm not focusing on anything specific, I just tried
| to address the two observations of your previous comment.
| If you keep adding more we'll never end this tread.
|
| It's not like I am a SuperEarther cultist or something, I
| just think life can adapt to a wider range of gravities.
| If you think about it, it's amazing that Earth life can
| withstand constant microgravity despite no evolutionary
| pressure in that direction. If microgravity is
| survivable, why not some degree of macrogravity?
| antonvs wrote:
| It figures. The universe is held together by bubble gum and
| strings.
| dylan604 wrote:
| the fact it is called string theory suggests it's just an idea
| and not known
| procflora wrote:
| Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all
| that stuff!
| thedrexster wrote:
| An eternal classic, brother, well done!
| Beijinger wrote:
| Big claims. Solid names.
|
| ""All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along
| with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples
| brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx," said Furukawa. "The new
| discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the
| molecule RNA are present in Bennu.""
|
| Let's hope it is not a contamination.
| metalman wrote:
| sugars,gum, and stardust? so like, somehow,teenage girls have
| been getting off the planet and hanging around in space and
| leaving a mess behind, bet it has that wierd artificial cotton
| candy smell
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-05 23:02 UTC)