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Ancient Comet Fragments Found In Antarctic Snow

Posted by Soulskill on from the cool-and-collected dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Cosmos Magazine: "Two tiny meteorites recently recovered from Antarctic snow contain material dating back to the birth of our Solar System, and may provide clues about the delivery of organic matter to Earth. Researchers believe that these micrometeorites likely came from the cold, comet-forming outer regions of the gas and dust cloud that comprised the early Solar System, and sample its composition. Discovered in 2006, the particles measure less than 0.25 mm across and survived their journey through Earth's atmosphere relatively unscathed. More importantly, scientists found that they contain unusually high amounts of organic matter."

13 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. RUN! by PedoPope · · Score: 5, Funny

    re:"More importantly, scientists found that they contain unusually high amounts of organic matter." Just before he choked, fell to the ground, and turned into a multi-tentacled extra terrestrial and savagely attacked the audience.

    1. Re:RUN! by Xyrus · · Score: 4, Funny

      Can you please keep your hentai fueled Japanese tentacle fantasies to yourself?

      Thanks,
        The Managerment

      --
      ~X~
    2. Re:RUN! by reset_button · · Score: 3, Informative

      Run? We need to explore! I see the words "ancient" and "Antartica", and I think awesome chair weapon to fight off the Goa'uld. Of course, the ZPM is probably depleted...

  2. Re:this theory again by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 5, Informative

    Organic materials are just a class of chemicals - nothing to do with life as such. By now, it is pretty clear from spectroscopic measurements that the universe is full of simple organic matter like methane, methanol, ethanol, acetic acid, simple amino acids and the like. So it is not that surprising that this comet fragments carry organics. They form all the time, all over the place. This is of course essential for the formation for life, but the availability of small organics is not the critical step.

    --
    Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  3. WOW! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    These fragments are 6000 years old. Truly mind boggling.

  4. hmmm by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The panspermian theory seems to be a paradox. If organic matter came from somewhere else to here, how did it get to that somewhere else? And more importantly, how did it form?

    --
    The game.
    1. Re:hmmm by maxume · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not really a paradox, it just isn't an answer to how life originally arose.

      (It is perfectly consistent for life to have originated somewhere else and spread here)

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    2. Re:hmmm by cyberthanasis12 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And more importantly, how did it form?

      That's easy. When a star goes nova, it does nucleosynthesis, which means that carbon (and lithium and oxygen etc) are synthesized by helium, which has been synthesized by hydrogen.
      Now, Sun is third or fourth generation star, which means that it is made of leftovers of other stars which have gone nova (or supernova). Part of the staff of other stars was carbon.
      As Carl Sagan used to say, our bodies are made by star dust.

  5. How do you find it by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting
    When reading the summary, I wondered how they could find such a small thing. Here is what we find in the story:

    To find these sub-millimetre-scale particles, Duprat and colleagues melted and sieved untainted snow that fell near the French-Italian CONCORDIA station in central Antarctica between 1955 and 1970.

    I suppose since there isn't much dirt in Antarctica, any that you find has as good a chance of being a meteorite as anything else.

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    Qxe4
  6. Re:Preparing for 2012?? probably! by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whoa, dude... Haven't had shrooms this potent for years! What's your source for the stuff?

    --
    Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  7. Re:this theory again by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Informative

    It unfortunately doesn't appear to be freely available online anywhere, but you might be interested in this survey paper if you have access to a university library.

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    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  8. You're confused a little by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Informative

    Organic matter != Life though. I'm not sure if Panspermia brought life to Earth or not, but the organic matter in comets isn't alive. It's just the building blocks that could potentally have been involved in life coming into being.

  9. It's turtles all the way by mangu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Organic matter can mean a lot of different things. Simple organic molecules may form in the gas clouds in space which give origin to planetary systems.

    More complex molecules are a different thing, many of those require liquid water to form. The most plausible answer is that compounds such as methane were formed in space and accreted into earth and the other planets.

    Then chemistry in the earth atmosphere and oceans built those into more and more complicated structures until life began.