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

About time

[shadowbearer]

Our findings are proof that there is presolar organic material coming into the Solar System yet today

I would have been shocked if this hadn't been found eventually - but it's nice to have positive proof.

Seems to me that this evidence gives a small boost to the Panspermia theory.

SB

Re:About time

[shadowbearer]

That's an interesting question; but the civilizations would have to be incredibly long-lived, thousands or tens of thousands times longer lived than if they used radio waves.

I think that one possible answer, and the likely one, to Fermi's Paradox is that civilizations evolve technologically past using radio waves for communication very, very rapidly, in centuries or less. They find some way to communicate using *insert future tech here* that EM level civs haven't discovered yet.

I doubt we'd be of any interest to very high-tech civs other than for some of their scientists studying primitive cultures. Roddenberrys' Prime Directive actually makes some sense if you think of it along those lines.

SB

Re:About time

[shadowbearer]

wrt to E2

I agree that it's possible, but whether it's actually happened or not, in our particular case, is open to argument. Here's the two arguements I see right now as being the most important.

For: The timescales involved would allow for plenty of chances for life to propogate, survive the conditions/impacts, etc, and re-establish itself. Somewhat supported by the ubiquity of organic molecules in pre-stellar clouds.

Against: Assumes that life started elsewhere first. Presumes bacterial spore survival over potentially tens/hundreds millions of years++ and conditions, plus environmental compatibility of said bacteria with early terrestrial conditions (see end of comments also).

I tend to lean toward it being possible, perhaps even probable, that life here was "seeded" from elsewhere; but of course there's no real evidence either way.

It's still a very fascinating theory, and I suspect it'll be argued for many centuries. If one really looks hard at the timescales involved (age of universe, mixing of star systems materials in those time periods, etc) then it makes a lot of sense...but no hard evidence yet, sigh.

Now if we could find some evidence that the Archeon age lifeforms are related to what we find in distant chemical signatures....holy !! :) But really, considering the conditions they survived under, it'd be a lot more likely they were descended from panspermic transport than modern life.

Cheers, xilmaril
SB

May not mean anything

[Hungus]

It may not be anything but a statistical anomoly. How we date and locate things has always fascinated me. I.e. this is older because it is underneath this other thing. This volcanic rock is this old because there is this much of a potasium isotope present. We have been acurately recording radiometrics for how long now? 20-30 years? (I know we have been recording them longer but not to the accuracy we can today) So think about the statistics: We look at the decay across 30 years and immediately say it must have a half life of 1.251 billion years? excuse me but thats a pretty small sample rate for my tastes. THis example uses K-AR but that just because I found google hits faster than for carbon isotopes .. sme basic priciple applies though not on as large a scale.

Re:May not mean anything

[addaon]

You are, I suppose, technically correct. It may be nothing but a statistical anomaly. Have you actually, uh, studied statistics? It's pretty easy to figure out the probability of that. It is equally probably that what we observe as gravity is merely a coincidence of random motion, and that the whole solar system go back to it's expected behavior and dissipate into a fine myst tomorrow.

Re:May not mean anything

[Hungus]

Yes it is possible but not equally probable that we could all simultaneously cease to exist . Yes, I have studied statistics to answer your question. And to counter your argument about gravity it is much more like someone saying gravity is 9.8mss cecause everywhere we have looked this was teh case. Now teh universe as a whole? I think we can observe that not only does gravity act in predicatble ways but we can manipulate it with ease ( add mass increase density etc) On the other hand I am talking about observing a dynamic substance over an infantesimal period of its existance. In fact I do not know of anything except for things like the platinum Kilogram standard and its ilk that have been studied for any duration. And to be honest I have my doubt about even that. Supposedly the kilogram is becoming less massive due to various factors, but those factors are well within the limits of measurement. More importantly than my knowledge of statistics would have been little things like my appointment to City College London to study Physics and Materials Sciences 14 years ago. What were you doing then?

Cosmic age of Uranium

[amightywind]

Here is a fun experiment even you slashdot simpletons can do. Uranium isotopes decay at different rates. Today U235/U238 = 1/127. Assuming all of the U on earth was formed at the same time, in the same supernova U235/U238 = 1. If you carry through the calculation for time elapsed you get 6 billion years. Pretty neat. That doesn't make the carbon results seem that extraordinary.