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Bus-sized Meteorite Gives Clues To Earth's Origin
This unnamed correspondent was one of the first to note this article: "Orginally posted here, scientists are looking at fragments of a meteorite that came to Earth in the Canadian Yukon. It's carbon-rich, and may contain clues about early life." The meteorite made a fiery appearance over the Yukon in January, and the fragments which are so interesting were recovered by a Canadian named Jim Brock, who gave them up for study by scientists from the University of Western Ontario. Why so exciting? As the article explains, "Preliminary tests of the pristine material find that it is loaded with organic molecules of the type that some experts have suggested could have been the original raw materials for the formation of life on Earth."
70% of those meteorites would have fallen into the ocean, and thus protected from UV.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
uh yeah, *you* go freeze your ass off on Mars. I'll watch as the mushroom cloud from the meteor impact on Mars vaporizes our first colony. It could happen either way.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Considering the theory that the earth was created in a mostly solid state from matter orbiting the sun, and considering that this meteorite was in a solar orbit before the Earth caught it, this may support the Deep-Earth Gas theory that hydrocarbons emanate from deep in the Earth, where they abound. Which would in turn support Thomas Gold's Deep Hot Biosphere theory that says that life formed deeper in the earth and only reached the surface after a slow ascent.
To answer an earlier question about where the diamond fragments came from, perhaps the force of the sudden impact on the earth's surface caused the compounds in the meteorite to crystalize and form the diamond shards? Just a thought.
CmdrChalupa, who finally changed his sig (drop -FlogSpammersNow- for my real address)
(geek humor. laugh now.)
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Only if the material burned contained carbon to begin with. Carbon doesn't just magically appear when you burn something.
DNA just wants to be free...
(Snotty comments deserve snotty replies)
This was a large object, much of it's internal material was unaffected by passage through the atmosphere. Sure the leading edge(s) were vaporized, and likely the following meter or so was pretty well cooked but the inside probably never warmed up significantly. Indeed it's this thermal stress that probably caused it to shatter low in the atmosphere.
The pieces came to rest on the surface of a frozen lake. That's a pretty pristine area. That they didn't melt through directly indicates they were fairly cool when they landed. Thus we have relatively cool objects that aren't heavily contaminated, particularly on their insides where the local bugs wouldn't have had much opportunity to penetrate.
As to their being unaffected during their time in space - likely they did go through changes, changes that leave evidence.
Finally, the burned organic material you're familiar with leaves carbon residues because it's organic in nature, which hereabouts is carbon-based. Burn a bit of sulphur though & you don't magically get carbon, you get sulphur & oxygen decomposition products. Burning generally means "oxidizing" which implies you'll get whatever + oxygen products, not whatever + oxygen = carbon.
Burning a random hunk of metal or stone such as most meteoric material is made of won't magically get you carbon either. It has to come from someplace & this object is interesting because it's got lots of carbon & it's in long-chain forms (not the sort of short-chains one gets from burning anyhow.)
Personally I suggest you signing up at your local Community College, perhaps for a basic course in Geology & another basic course in Chemistry. While you're at it you might consider Rhetoric (so you'll understand how to construct an argument) and Social Skills so you won't come off such an ass.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
You're forgetting that rock is opaque. UV would only sterilise the surface; and no-one's seriously suggesting that viable microbes would survive on the surface of meteroids anyway (when in space, vast differences is temparature and radiation; on reentry, it's washed in plasma; when on the ground, it'll be exposed to the probably highly acidic rain).
There are plenty of bacteria that live *in* rock. You can split stones open and see a coloured layer a few centimetres below the surface; that's them. These would survive meteoric reentry quite handily, and they're protected from all UV.
Or get our eggs out of the basket.
A few years ago, up until a few months ago, we were bombarded with Asteroid movies, and Discovery Channel Specials warning us of meteoric impacts to
,IIRC, Congressional discussions of the same.
End Interesting Life In Existance (E I LIE)(TM).
There were thinktank discussions about developing contingency plans and even
Each of the evil mentioned meteors (asteroids, comets on collision paths, etc) were well under the 220 ton chunk that hit the atmosphere. (granted, it burned down as it entered the atmosphere)
And we're still alive. Doesn't this at least *partially* discredit the meteor-that-ended-the -thunderlizard theory?
Could it be that Life on Earth is more resilient than the paranoid expect?
As far as I know, yes. The only carbon-containing molecule that is not considered organic is carbon dioxide.
No we don't. We still don't know where Trolls come from... do we, Troll?
An event like this happened in 1998 too. Whatever beings are launching these things need to figure out that Redmond is further south.
flatpack's post is obviously a Troll. MattMann was simply pointing it out. Why did he get modded down?
Life on Earth came about because of shards from Alderaan when the Empire destroyed it, hurtling though space. It just took a damn long time to get here, that's all! ;P
- I'm making a page dedicated to procrastinators! I'll let you know when I get started.
If UV radiation is so detrimental to organic matter (not life) how did it survive it's trek through space with 0 protection from the suns rays for millions of years to land on earth.
Now I agree that there was probably no life on earth during the time of little atmospheric protection, but no organic matter surviving is a crock
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
The guy's name is Jim Brook.
Incidentally, do diamonds qualify as organic molecules - they contain (ok, exclusively) carbon atoms.
It was just on this morning, so the audio stream won't pop up for another few days, but you can check Th e Morning Edition site in a day or two to listen to the story.
Cool, we should see if it's alive and then try to communicate with it...
H*rus
Mark
- if you love something, set it free; if it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it
Did anyone check if Magneto is still in his cage?
"Preliminary tests of the pristine material find that it is loaded with organic molecules of the type that some experts have suggested could have been the original raw materials for the formation of life on Earth."
Original materials for life in The Rock? Oh no! We're all descended from a professional wrestler! Evolution is true! You smell what The Rock is cookin'?
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Actually, UV radiation is harmful to most organic molecules since it is of sufficient energy to break many of the bonds which hold the molecules together. That is also why it is harmful to us (in the most fundamental sense).
Astronomers have found organic molecules in space (spectroscopic methods), and when they do they only find them in situations where they are shielded from higher energy electromagnetic radiation. Things like the insides of dust clouds make for good organic incubators since the outside layers absorb most of the radiation emitted from nearby stars. Mind you, they never really find anything too complex (mostly just basic organic molecules) but it does give some insight into how chemistry works on the interstellar scale.
UBU
Well, I actually work for the research group at UWO that was in charge of this. Here's the website.
The type of reasoning employed by such otherwise respected "scientists" such as Fred Hoyle in proposing that the origin of life was not on the Earth, but was instead in outer space, is fundamentally flawed and should not be taken seriously.
What they always seem to forget is that in those days the Earth's atmosphere was a lot different than it was today, and that the ozone layer did not exist. Hence, the Earth's surface and "atmosphere", such as it was, was a place where dangerous UV radiation had free range, and UV radiation at these levels is inimical to the presence of organic matter.
Any organic matter entering Earth's atmosphere at that time would have been destroyed by the UV radiation, and meteorites would have been sterile when they hit the Earth. I've yet to see a single theory that takes this into account, and I think that an extra-terrestrial genesis is just another piece of pseudo-science that will become a note in scientific history books in years to come.
At the end of the day we don't need to invoke mysterious agents from the stars to explain the start of life on Earth. We already have both religious and scientific explanaitions that satisfy all rational criteria for the origin of life.
It claims that the building blocks for the formation of life may have come from meteors, not life itself. This means that the carbon, hydrocarbons, and possibly even more complex compounds like amino acids came from outer space. Then, here on earth they spontaneously formed into whatever happened to be the first form of life.
I don't see why this should surprise anyone. The earth itself was formed by millions of meteors, asteroids, and specks of space dust coalescing into a big ball. If you really think about it, everything on the earth is made of atoms and molecules that, way way back, came from space.
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Worry about where it's going. :-) (I can see this happening in ten or twenty years btw..)
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http://www.genochoice.com
(I thought the links were pretty funny. :-))
-- Talonius
My reality check bounced.
Someone earlier talked about UV light destroying organic matter. It might be harmful to humans - but organic matter itself?
Organic matter basically means the chains-of-carbon-atom type molecules. It doesn't mean living matter. Gasoline is an organic compound. So is methane, ethane, butane, propane, heptane etc. Ethanol (C2H5OOH, common alcohol) is organic matter. Methylethylketone (MEK, commonly used as solvent, cleaning agent or paint thinner) is organic matter. None of these things alone are living or about to spring to life. In fact, gasoline is very toxic, but it's still an organic compound. To briefly summarize, organic chemistry centres around carbon-based chemistry: not necessarily the chemistry of life.
It is the long carbon chain molecules that make life possible. What I expect they have found in this meteorite are long-chain carbon molecules - not microbes or anything like that. Even so, this is still a very interesting find.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
What would have happened if the Tunguska event of 1908 had happened 2 hours later? Boom, in the middle of Moscow... Here's some statistics; whether they comfort you or scare you is all in how you look at things. There are probably about 1000 >1km asteroids that cross earth orbit. One of those hits us, on extreme average, every 300,000 years or so. You might be interested in reading this. Also, this place has a lot of good info and links about meteorites, impacts, and the like.
But you've gotta think... between airbursts and small impacts, we're bombarded pretty heavily already. All precautions allowed by our level of technology are being taken; if a meteorite hit us tomorrow, there's not a single damn thing we can do about it. Worrying about it is as pointless (even less so) than worrying about tripping over a sidewalk crack and breaking your neck. If you spend every spare minute thinking about it, yes, you'll be a paranoid wreck. So don't.
Of course, some people (Arthur C. Clarke among others) think it'll take a major impact in a populated area to unite the planet... The problem is it could happen tomorrow.. or 10,000 years from now. We just don't know. (of course, because I said that, and because today's Friday the 13th, I'll probably get hit by one on the way to work)
End of lesson. You may press the button.
You mean we're all CANADIAN??!!
;)
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