Carbon From Outer Space Older Than Our Sun

Roland Piquepaille writes "While looking at interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) found in the Earth's stratosphere, researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis have found carbon older than the Solar System. They identified the organic material by its carbon isotopic composition, different from the one of carbon found on Earth. "Our findings are proof that there is presolar organic material coming into the Solar System yet today," said Christine Floss, the leading scientist. "This material has been preserved for more than 4.5 billion years, which is the age of the Solar System. It's amazing that it has survived for so long." This overview contains more details and references. It also contains pictures including the one of a sample's isotopic structure at a sub-micrometer scale."

Comments

Well.

[ColaMan]

Seeing that carbon generation is a long way down the chain from the present hydrogen -> helium main cycle our star is in, it is logical to conclude that all carbon here on earth must at one point have come from some extra-solar source.

So this is news because?

Re:isotopic ratios

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I have a hard time understanding how they could use the ratio of 12 to 13 to date the carbon to 4.5 billion years if both isotopes are stable. Radiocarbon dating of the type we use to analyze fossil remains is based on the decay of C 14, which according to link above has a half life of about 6000 years. That makes it good for archaeology, since human history doesn't go back more than a couple orders of magnitude further, but I don't think you could extrapolate back billions of years that way. You'd end up with an imperceptibly small amount. Too bad the article doesn't specify what particular isotopes they're looking at...

Re:May not mean anything

[You're All Wrong]

Maybe, maybe not.

Assume that they have 6*10^20 atoms of the stuff. If the half life is a billion years, then they can 'sample' >10^10 decays. That's not a small sample.

YAW.