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Organic Matter Found In Canadian Meteorite
eldavojohn writes "From what sounds like the opening of an X-Files episode, Canadian scientists have reportedly found in a meteorite organic matter older than the sun at Tagish Lake in Canada. From the article: '"We mean that the material in the meteorite has been processed the least since it was formed. The material we see today is arguably the most representative of the material that first went into making up the solar system." The meteorite likely formed in the outer reaches of the asteroid belt, but the organic material it contains probably had a far more distant origin. The globules could have originated in the Kuiper Belt group of icy planetary remnants orbiting beyond Neptune. Or they could have been created even farther afield. The globules appear to be similar to the kinds of icy grains found in molecular clouds — the vast, low-density regions where stars collapse and form and new solar systems are born.' The article implies that life could potentially survive in these meteorites and maybe even travel through space — supporting the theory that life may have arrived on earth and evolved from that point on."
it's just carbon compounds.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Organic matter has been found in meteorites decades ago.
Life is found most everywhere that it can reach. The only reason we have not found life in space yet is because gravity does a good job of keeping life on the planet and out of space. If there were a place on earth where life could encouter vacuum, it would be a very good bet that life would evolve to cope with it. Trees split water and create sugar using sunlight, animals create water and eat sugar. If you can conceive of a lifeform that can do both of these things, vacuum is a perfectly acceptable environment. In fact there are quite a few "anaerobic" microbes that prefer to not be around oxygen - if they could evolve to handle lower pressures they could make a good candidate for interstellar life travel.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Im actually interested, how do you measure the age of an object so old, when its not from earth ?
I mean the amount of radioactive materials that fall apart a thousand or so years after being 'inserted' into a certain object is valid only if we know the amount on the env surrounding it.
How do we know how old this thing is without actually being sure where it came from ?
Maybe there was less of the izotope in the env. ?
Or maybe there was much, much more of it ?
This is besides the point if the rock actually contains some fossilized life forms, if its a billion years younger or older, then this fact makes a pretty big difference, right ?
I understand that the age of stars can be measured by the spectrum (iirc, as light travels further/longer it leans towards one of the edges).
I also get how we can determine how we check the basic building block of an object a milion light years away by the light spectrum too.
But the age, when we are not really sure of the exact amount of izotopes in the env. ?
Could somebody educate this fool with a friendly wikipedia link ?
What kind of "news" story makes such a big deal out of such a fundamentally important claim - "organic matter older than the Sun found in Canadian meteorites", but doesn't say exactly what makes these "globules" qualify as "organic"? The only details about the claimed "organic" matter are that they "resemble minute hollow balls with carbon-rich shells", where "minute" is vaguely implied to be smaller than 10 um^3. (a billionth the volume of a grape).
There's more info detailing that the Yukon is cold and unpopulated than any info about how this carbon is "organic".
In fact, practically all carbon on the Earth is older than the Sun. Carbon is produced in the cores of unusually massive stars, then distributed across the Universe after the star explodes in supernova or similarly huge cataclysm. Just composition of carbon, and the other "organic" elements (nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen) essential to Earth organic chemistry, doesn't make these tiny grains accurately called "organic globules".
Maybe actual science, written by an actual journalist, could report the more important facts behind this sensational headline.
--
make install -not war
There are many examples of life that can survive in the most extreme of places.
Tbere is bacteria that lives quite happily on plutonium fuel rods inside nuclear reactors. The radiation doesn't bother them.
Thnere is bacteria that can synthesis sugars vital for life without photosynthesis from compounds which are lethal to other forms of life. Examples of this have been found at deep sea hot vents. There is even bacteria which lives off methane. Also many different kinds of bacteria and viruses (the lowest known form of life) which can place themselves into a state of suspended animation for thousands and even theoretically millions of year.
Thus, life has many ways to survive in deep space.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Free books for you? That was really sweet of her.
Perhaps you should have judged her by the act of giving rather than the gift. Rather than being condescending and judgmental (way to make her feel good, champ), you could have scored points and broadened her horizons by thinking about what she gave you and suggesting some other books she might have liked. Sounds like she likes shorter, punchier thrillers.
I'd have given her Gaston Leroux's "Phantom of the Opera", the collected short stories and cartoons of James Thurber, and maybe something short by literary like Ondatjee's "Running in the Family". How on earth can you know she won't like what you like unless you let her read it?
Actually, finding life is very difficult because the necessary conditions for the formation of a single celled organism only exist with very low possibilities.
Keep in mind that we have never manufactured a single living cell with functional DNA in a lab even with conditions entirely under our human control. Pasteur's Law still holds today. If we can't use thousands of years of engineering, including at least 2 decades of advanced bio-medical technology, to manufacture a single funcional cell from non-organic material, do you really expect it to form arbitrarily in space all the time?
We are the product of an extremely unlikely physical/chemical event, and we may very well be alone.
Either that, or you must be new here.
-Red
(And you're totally right, by the way. WHo gives a crap if she has awful taste in books? That would be like turning a girl away casue she doesnt play video games, or worse, likes the PS3)
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
Chemical reactions can occur in places other than Earth.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.