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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."
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
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Jabba the Hut had Lando freeze a bunch of people including Han Solo in Carbonite. He hung Han on the wall where he was later rescued. The rest got launched into space and were used for target practice. This was probably their remains.
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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.
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looking at interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) found in the Earth's stratosphere
How do you do that? You catch them with a giant Swiffer mop?
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Not really, some of you may recall that the law of conservation matter sez that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. So it had to survive. If it hadn't then this would be amazing because it would cast strong evidence against the law of conservatin of matter. I'm mean, really now, what else would it do besides float around in space forever?
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Oh, and those theoretical apparitions called black holes -- the great Insinkerators in the sky.
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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?
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
It would really be surprising if our sun was older than the carbon from outer space.
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It may not be anything but a statistical anomoly. How we date and locate things has always fascinated me. .... 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.
I see your point and agree that using science to know the past is very tricky. In the case of measuring half-lives, the methods are statistically accurate because of the huge sample size in atoms. If you start with 6 x 10^23 atoms and time how long it takes a billion of them to decay, you get a very accurate estimate of the decay rate. That the experiment only watches the atoms for a billioth of a half-life is less important that the fact that it counts the activity of such a large sample size of atoms.
But the problem you are alluding to is deeper than that. Although we can be statistically confident that the half-life of K40 is 1.251 billion years currently, that measurement gives us no proof that it has always been 1.251 billion years. For that we need accurate measurements of half-life at two widely separated times (and as you say, we've only been doing that for a few decades).
IANAP, so perhaps some astrophysicist here can enlighten us on how we know that the laws of physics dont change. Based on the invariance of spectral lines, I suspect that we can be confident that the eletromagnetic force has been constant over time (even here I wonder if its possible to change the laws of physics to mimic a redshift). But how do we know that the weak force and strong force have remained constant over the life span of the universe? For example, is there a way to accurately measure the half-life of elements spawned by billion light-year distant supernovae?
Finally, it may be that changes in half-life over galatic timescales are irrelevant and long as all half-lives change by the same factor. A consistent shift in half-lives would mess up the numerical dates, but not disturb the order. Thus, we may know that the carbon is older than our solar system, but be off in our numerical estimate of the age of the solar system.
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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.
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