Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Murchison Meteorite Still Contentious

Posted by michael on from the tainted-love dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The well-known 1969 meteorite that fell 60 miles north of Melbourne, Australia, remains remarkably contentious today. The 100 kilogram carbon rock : a) contains pre-biotic proteins and 12% water; b) harbors 50 amino acids not found on Earth; c) favors the tell-tale signature of biochemistry based on a dominant left-handed chirality, compared to random or racemic mixtures found in test-tube syntheses. While terrestrial contamination (even interior to the meteor) may discount this so-called 'Murchison meteor', its light isotopes of carbon and nitrogen suggest the left-handed amino acids not found elsewhere on Earth have the same ratios as the right-handed ones. This would not be the case if, say, bacteria was just making the left-handed ones after impact. Seems quite a controversy from down-under."

5 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Let me ask this... by Mullen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So if the big debate is whether these "rocks" from space contain the building blocks of life, but are being contaminated when they hit earth. Why don't we send up a robot (Or what have you) into space and collect some rocks that have not been on earth?

    To me, if you collected about 20 or 30 of these things, it would answer the question rather quickly. Yes, I know that does mean we would get rocks with ammo acids, but sitting waiting for the rocks to come to us seems to be a waste of time.

    --
    Linux O Muerte!
    1. Re:Let me ask this... by odyrithm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      but sitting waiting for the rocks to come to us seems to be a waste of time.

      erm... how exactly do we catch them would you suggest? pretty nippy little fuckers when there streaking at about 100k miles a second through space..

      --
      moo
  2. Just want to ask.. by Visaris · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How would organic material from earth make it into the center of an object like this? Can the force of the impact explain that some how? Just want to know : )

    --

    I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
  3. Auto-Google by jjjefff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Perhaps even more interesting (especially if you're already familiar with the debate) is the fact that highlighting a word or phrase on that page causes a browser window to pop up with the results of a Google search on that word or phrase...

    Not technically very difficult, but a cool idea...

  4. Re:reason why not by davebo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    here's a couple of reasons I can think off the top of my head:

    1) we've got to get the ship someplace where there are "space rocks". a low-earth orbit really isn't going to accomplish that - you'd have to go to the asteroid belt for a ready supply. that's not easy. or, conversly, you land someplace where rocks may have accumulated (ie, the moon, mars).

    2) if you send a ship to a place with lots of space rocks, the ship is going to get hit by a lot of space rocks. shielding becomes a problem.

    3) if you land some place, you're stuck getting rocks next to where you land (like viking) or you've got to build a way to move around (like pathfinder)

    4) building a reliable, completely automated assay for amino acids is not trivial. if it's mobile, that's going to be even less trivial.