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Meteorite Contains Complex Organic Molecules
An anonymous reader writes "Previously unknown organic molecules have been discovered in a 100 kg meteorite that hit Australia in 1969, suggesting that our early Solar System contained a soup of highly complex organic chemistry long before life appeared. Quoting: 'According to [the study's lead author], the newly discovered compounds in the Murchison meteorite "may have contributed to the organic complexity of the early 'soup' that led to the development of life on Earth." The findings also suggest that extraterrestrial chemical diversity surpasses that found on Earth. The meteor probably passed through primordial clouds in the early solar system, accumulating organic molecules in a snowball effect along the way. By tracing the sequence of organic molecules in the meteorite, researchers believe they may also be able to create a timeline for their formation and alteration since the early days of our solar system.'"
Looking at better news sources, one finds the scientists found over 14,000 organic compounds which contained (besides carbon), the hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen, etc. None of those things by themselves constitutes an organic substance. Do kids even study chemistry in high school anymore?
A giant rock has been on Earth for forty years, and just now they're discovering that it's contains organic compounds? Um...did it fall directly into a controlled vacuum?
If you find organic molecules which do not exist on Earth OTHER than on this meteorite, the likely conclusion is that the meteorite is the source, not the recipient.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
"Well the thought of the building blocks for life to have just "formed" on earth is too far fetched."
Why is it far fetched? We've generated nearly every one of the bases of RNA and DNA in conditions that mimic the early Earth - Some from experiments like the Miller-Urey Experiment created a whole slew of different organic compounds, and more recent studies have shown the synthesis of an amino acid resulting from exposure to ultra-violet light (I believe it was uracil?) - showing that there are many many different ways to create complex organic compounds.
-Bill
Well, to make your statement 100% perfect, please say "contains Hydrocarbons", because molecules like CO2 and CO don't count as organic material compound (though they are used/produced in a lot of organisms through organic chemistry of course)
but i guess he was joking of course... ;)
Well the thought of the building blocks for life to have just "formed" on earth is too far fetched.
Basically you're promoting "vitalism"
Organic chemistry dropped vitalism around 1828 more or less due to Wohler synthesis.
Looks like biology still hasn't made that advance yet, OR your belief is a bit out of date, out of step with modern bio beliefs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohler_synthesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Well played!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
You internet fu is weak.
Original article.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/02/12/0912157107.abstract
To build on your point, I read the same story yesterday (could be the same source, I don't recall) and their work is based on mass spectrometry only (from the vague, unscientific, dumbed down crap that finally makes it to the popular press so I could be wrong). Essentially, they would crush a small sample of the meteorite, analyze it for known compounds/elements (dunno what instruments they use) and infer the composition. Their spokesperson also mentioned that their instruments aren't sensitive to every single ion species so they might even be missing things. Also, since their selection is just that - a selection - the actual number of different compounds may be much higher!
At this point, people that are really interested in understanding the science should look up the working of a mass spectrometer. The toy model is that you volatilize ("gassify [sic] by heating") your sample and electrically tear apart the molecules using a high voltage between (canonically) a pair of electrodes. Guide the ions electromagnetically into a chamber with a magnetic field perpendicular to the ions' motion. This bends the ions in different circular paths (the radii are different because of the ions' charge/mass ratio). Now, here is where the sophistication (read: cost) of the instrument comes into play - the detectors that measure the incidence of these separated ions. For organic chemistry, your instrument would have C, H, O, N and other common elements calibrated. Of course, this is all just a toy model of how things work - the specific instrument you use would of course have its own pros/cons. Cheaper ones might have more assumptions built into them (where you know what you're trying to measure and just wanna know relative element ratios - clearly this is not what you would want to use for exobiology where assumptions can be fatal).
Here's the abstract of the actual paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/7/2763
Full text requires a subscription, alas.
From a quick perusal of the text (University library FTW), this paper is a breakthrough for precisely the reason I alluded to above, i.e. for exobiology, you want to have little to no assumptions built into your investigation - a so-called 'non-targeted investigation' as the authors say. The newer analytical methods they used include (for keyword searches by interested readers): Electrospray ionization (ESI) Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance/mass spectrometry (FTICR/MS), Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and ultraperformance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF/MS). This was from the actual paper.
Intuitively, you can sort of see what all that jargon means (thank science for meaningful terminology). FTICR/MS sounds like making the ions go in a circle using a magnetic field (the rotation frequency for a given charge/mass and mag field is the cyclotron resonant frequency - can be found via Fourier transform methods I presume - this sounds quite interesting and I believe I'll look this up to see exactly how they do it). NMR is simply MRI (the latter is a term used because neobarbs get their panties in a bunch when they hear "nuclear"). Vaguely speaking: you flip nuclear spins using an oscillatory mag field and measure the response - tells you what stuff is made of. Time-of-flight spectrometry is exactly what it sounds like. Recall my toy model of spectrometry. Well, instead of a mag field, you use an electric field to accelerate the ions and figure out how long it takes to make a given trip. Simple high school kinematics tells you the rest. Dunno offhand what the chromatography or ESI are but I'm sure you can google them if you're interested.
By the way, I see that there are many here who bring up the question of whether this is just terrestrial contamination. While the question is legit, the idea that scientists routinely ignore such obvious questions is a symptom of the irresponsible and incomplete nature of sc