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Organic Matter Found In Canadian Meteorite
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Dec 03, 2006 01:06 PM
from the seeding-gaia dept.
from the seeding-gaia dept.
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."
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They're here... (Score:4, Funny)
Our new overlords (Score:4, Funny)
Canadians! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Canadians! (Score:5, Funny)
Since it is Sunday, a toque is mandatory for all. Those failing to cover ones head with the divine knit-cap will be punished by means of harsh words.
That is all.
Parent
Re:Canadians! (Score:5, Funny)
Canadians are from outerspace!
I believe that you mean oater space.
Parent
I've seen this before. (Score:4, Funny)
Summary misleading... (Score:5, Informative)
So from what I read they structures found COULD assist organic life, but are not actual evidence of them.
Re:Summary misleading... (Score:5, Informative)
So from what I read they structures found COULD assist organic life, but are not actual evidence of them.
That's one point of view.
There's a common myth that evidence speaks for itself. It doesn't. It just sits there on the lab table, incapable of speaking. Evidence also neither supports nor refutes any theory, these also being things evidence is incapable of doing unless the evidence is itself sentient. You're anthropomorphizing the evidence when you claim it supports or refutes a theory.
Now, various interpretations of the evidence can be used by scientists to support or refute theories. Insofar as some scientists interpret this evidence in such a way that it allows them to argue for ET-assisted biogenesis, it is evidence for that. Of course, some scientists will interpret it differently and then it won't be evidence for that.
All this is perfectly fine. Just don't make the mistake the quoted poster made, where you think there's a fact of the matter about whether this actually is or isn't evidence for one theory or another. Science doesn't work that way, that's just perpetuating a myth.
Parent
Re:Organic (MOD PARENT UP) (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Keep in mind... (Score:5, Informative)
Ryan Fenton
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ancient astronouts (Score:3, Funny)
Does that mean the meteorite pulverized some ancient astronouts in a far away galaxy?
THAT might be the reason we haven't gotten contact yet with them; they would've cancelled their space project after such a PR-disaster...
Waaait a second... (Score:4, Funny)
NOOOOOOOO
Re:Waaait a second... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
So what. Its happened plenty of times before (Score:3, Insightful)
Panspermia (Score:4, Interesting)
Attributed to Anaxagoras ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaxagoras [wikipedia.org] ) in the 5th century BCE. Basically the idea the precursors to life are everywhere in the universe, allowing that life on earth may have sprung from this source.
It seems plausible. This evidence doesn't prove it though.
FTA:
Fullerene? That would explain a lot about the persistence of these structures through the process of transport and reentry.
Disclaimer: "God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform." - William Cowper ( for varying values of "God", "mysterious", "wonders" - symbolset )
how to measure the age (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ?
Re:how to measure the age (Score:5, Informative)
The typical way to set an age of a very old object is, as you note, by looking at its radioactive decay history. A good chronometer for meteorites is uranium, both U238 and U235. They have different decay rates, so the difference between the starting and ending abundance ratio of the two gives you the age. As you note, the trick is to determine what the starting ratio is; this is largely an educated guess, but presumably the population seen in the meteorite was created in the same supernova explosion, so a little nuclear physics tells you what that should be (Google 'neutron drip line'). A good check on the result is to also look at the isotope ratio of lead: Pb207 is the daughter of U238 decay, and Pb206 the daughter of U235. There are several other useful decays to check (Al26 comes to mind), so while it's admittedly a house of cards (but so is everything in astronomy, really) , it is at least more than one card.
And, not to be critical, but your description of determining the ages of stars is...off. To be fair, it is a difficult method to both explain and perform for individual stars.
Parent
No Intelligent Life at NatGeo (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
New summary, sensationalism aside (Score:3, Insightful)
"The structures are invisible to the naked eye and resemble minute hollow balls with carbon-rich shells. A chunk of meteorite no larger than a grape could contain a billion of the tiny globules.
Theoretically, their hollow-ball shape could have presented a homey environment of concentrated organic matter where early cellular life could develop.
Such theories boast little evidence but raise many intriguing questions. " (emphasis mine)
Wrong spelling (Score:3, Funny)
Why are organic molecules special? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do we assume that there is no life in some place we can't explore, like inside the Sun? Certainly there is no life there based on complex carbon molecules. However, what excludes the possibility of life based on such other mechanism?
NEWS FLASH (Score:4, Insightful)
Dan East
Organic does not mean "from life" (Score:4, Informative)
Organic matter != life... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Organic matter != life... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Organical matter = lifes (Score:5, Funny)
My life sci 101 class teached me that
CORRECT:
My life sci 101 class learned me that
Let's get it right, people.
--
Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me
But you won't let those robots defeat me
Parent
Re:Organic matter != life... (Score:5, Funny)
Unlike your Eng 101 class, which clearly did not.
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Re:Organic matter != life... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Organic matter != life... (Score:5, Informative)
Practically all compounds are organic. You can connect carbons in an infinite number of ways. There are an infinite number of inorganic molecules too, but it's a much smaller infinity. Large inorganic molecules tend to break apart. Most atoms either want more electrons too much or don't know what to do with the ones they have, and the resulting instabilities build up over distance. You don't see many inorganic polymers- only a few, like polyphosphazenes and asbestos needles. Carbon is good at forming large covalent molecules, and its presence stabilizes large molecules with other elements.
People think organic chemistry is hard because they see all the compounds and freak. In fact organic is actually much easier than inorganic chem. The players are C, H, O, and N, plus phosphate (PO4---) if you're talking biochemistry. Phosphate aside, these are simple, well understood atoms. Being small, they are hard atoms with limited deformation in electrical fields (like from other nearby atoms). They display a small range of behaviors and form covalent bonds in a predictable way. We still sometimes learn new stuff about carbon, for example, like we did with buckyballs and nanotubes. But neither of these involved any fundamental carbon chemistry that we didn't already understand.
Carbon atoms get 4 bonds each, nitrogens 3, oxygens 2, hydrogens 1. You can connect them up in any way that satisfies those bond number requirements. But each bond should have a carbon on one end (preferably both ends) or you get unstable stuff. (Exceptions: N-H, O-H. You can get away with O=N, O-O, N-N, and N=N sometimes, but not too much, or the results are unpleasant.) Each of C, N, and O can form double bonds. Most double bonds are between C and either O or N. Especially in biochem, where carbon-carbon double bonds are not as common. Both C and N can form triple bonds, such as in nitriles (CN) or alkynes like acetylene (HCCH). Triple bonds are even rarer. (If you're bad you can use F, Cl, Br, or I to make CFCs and similar things. Halogens generally follow the same rules as H, except the bonds are more electron-poor than with H, and more stable. CFCs almost never appear in biochemistry.) Phosphate gets 3 bonds, but they can be anionic. When covalent, the bonds are usually with hydroxyls or other phosphates across shared bridge oxygens. In biochem P never appears outside its phosphate. When it does it gets 5 bonds. Many organophosphates used in industry and agriculture incorporate direct C-P bonds. The nerve agent Sarin for example has a P-CH3 bond as well as a P-F bond with fluorine. Phosphate can appear in organic and bioorganic polymers too, like DNA. In general addition of N or especially O to organic molecules makes them electron poor, and addition of H makes them electron rich. From least to most oxidized: C-OH, C=O, COOH. Heavily oxidized molecules tend to break apart.
Being mindful of the above restrictions, you can connect C, H, O, N, phosphate, etc. up like tinkertoys to form almost anything you can think of. Mostly stuff like tar and varnish. And that's basically what you learn in organic chemistry. Then they'll have you spend most of the semester memorizing hundreds of quirky little "recipe" type reactions with various bizarre reagents, so that you can eventually synthesize any organic structure in a lab that you want. Most of these little recipes were figured out in the 19th century.
Inorganic chemistry is less systematic. Consider something like Hg. We find out new stuff about Hg all the time. We don't understand its electronic structure very well. It has lots of excited states available to it, and it displays unexplained absorption lines that appear to be influenced by what's around. Its outer 6s valence electrons fly straight through the nucleus at relativistic speeds, raising their effective mass and shrinking their orbitals below the atom's surface. As a res
Parent
Re:Organic matter != life... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
great balls of fire (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Extra-solar life? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox [wikipedia.org].
Think about how far humankind will advance in 50 years, and whether we would be able to make a micro-replicator that we could send to other stars.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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-organi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This may well be true, or not. Right now we don't know how life emerged (though we have quite a few hypotheses [wikipedia.org]), so we can't say.
However, you might want to reflect on this: traces of photosynthetic life have been found in the oldest sediments we know of (see Hadean [wikipedia.org]). Fully-formed fossils appear not much later than that. That puts a lower bound for the
Re:Extra-solar life? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.google.com/search?q=radiation+extremop
Parent
Re:Extra-solar life? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:More like "Deception Point" than the X-Files (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Re:More like "Deception Point" than the X-Files (Score:5, Informative)
LOL. True story:
Recently, I was trying to chat up a very attractive girl. I mentioned in our harried conversation (she was at work) that I enjoyed reading but hadn't been to the bookstore in ages, blah blah. She told me that she, too, loved to read, and promised to bring in some of her favourites for me. Great, I thought! This could be the start of something interesting.
A few days later I stop in to see her and she smiles and points to a small bag 'o books in the corner. How sweet, right? Well, inside the bag were 4 were Dan Brown novels. Cervantes I wasn't expecting, but Dan Brown? I tried reading one of them (maybe I was wrong about him), but the absence of any writing talent in combination with an absurd plot reminded so much of high school that all I could was groan and put the book back in the bag with the others.
Haven't been back to see her since. It's been a month, but I wonder whether that's not long enough.
Parent
Re:More like "Deception Point" than the X-Files (Score:5, Funny)
Nobody expects the Spanish Author!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:More like "Deception Point" than the X-Files (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Parent
Re:More like "Deception Point" than the X-Files (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Turning a girl away because she likes PS3 may be a good thing. If she doesn't already have said console, she may expect you to buy it for her as a tribute. (Diamond earrings are cheaper)
Re:More like "Deception Point" than the X-Files (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:silly question? (Score:5, Informative)
We still don't actually *know* how the solar system formed, and until then, there's no way we can actually definitely say how old the solar system is. What we think is that the system was formed in a nebula as a big cloud of dust that gradually started to clump around a center. As the protostar gathered mass, the cloud started to spin and formed into a disc, called an accretion disc. The theory is that all of the asteroids, planets and comets formed at the same time as the sun. This theory is supported, in that some of our observations have shown accretion discs in nebulae, but we really have no way to actually *prove* that this is how our solar system formed.
The thing is... if that's how our solar system formed, then we're able to measure the age of the solar system by looking at the age of some of the other objects in the solar system. Fact is that most of the objects out in the kuiper belt and oort cloud (think in the 50-100,000 AU radius) are about 4.5-5 billion years old. Given our current model for how the solar system formed, that would mean that the sun is about the same age. There are almost certainly some objects in our solar system that are older than the system itself... either as captured objects from other solar systems (100k AU is halfway to Proxima Centauri), or as objects that were part of the nursery nebula that we formed from.
As to the original article, it's really nothing special at all. "Organic" molecules just mean carbon compounds. The solar system is full of organic molecules. Something like 2/3 of the asteroids in the solar system, especially in the outer solar system, are carbonaceous. Organic != Life. It's cool that we've found a meteorite that's older than the solar system is thought to be, and it's cool that it's carbonaceous... but that's because it's extremely rare that a carbon-based meteorite survives entry into our solar system, and it's also very rare to find a meteorite that's older than the solar system. Finding the two in conjunction is a really cool thing. But it's in now ay proof of extra-terrestrial life.
Parent