NASA Unveils First Glimpse of Space Rock Collected From Asteroid (nytimes.com) 17
The jackpot from a seven-year mission to bring back bits of an asteroid was unveiled on Wednesday. From a report: NASA officials in Houston displayed images of salt-and-pepper chunks of rock and particles of dark space dust that were brought back to Earth from the asteroid, Bennu, and described initial scientific observations about the material. The mission, Osiris-Rex, concluded in September when a capsule full of asteroid was jettisoned through Earth's atmosphere and recovered in the Utah desert. The first pieces of materials that leaked outside the container were analyzed using a variety of laboratory techniques, revealing just the earliest findings.
Scientists found water molecules trapped in clay minerals -- water from asteroids similar to Bennu could have filled Earth's oceans. "The reason that Earth is a habitable world, that we have oceans and lakes and rivers and rain, is because these clay minerals, like minerals, like the ones we're seeing from Bennu, landed on Earth four billion years ago," Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator, said during a NASA event on Wednesday. The materials also contained sulfur, key for many geological transformations in rocks.
"It determines how quickly things melt and it is also critical for biology," said Dr. Lauretta, who displayed microscopic images and 3-D visualizations of the material. The scientists also found magnetite, an iron oxide mineral that can play an important role as a catalyst in organic chemical reactions. "We're looking at the kinds of minerals that may have played a central role in the origin of life on Earth," Dr. Lauretta said. The samples are also chock-full of carbon, the element that is the building block for life.
Scientists found water molecules trapped in clay minerals -- water from asteroids similar to Bennu could have filled Earth's oceans. "The reason that Earth is a habitable world, that we have oceans and lakes and rivers and rain, is because these clay minerals, like minerals, like the ones we're seeing from Bennu, landed on Earth four billion years ago," Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator, said during a NASA event on Wednesday. The materials also contained sulfur, key for many geological transformations in rocks.
"It determines how quickly things melt and it is also critical for biology," said Dr. Lauretta, who displayed microscopic images and 3-D visualizations of the material. The scientists also found magnetite, an iron oxide mineral that can play an important role as a catalyst in organic chemical reactions. "We're looking at the kinds of minerals that may have played a central role in the origin of life on Earth," Dr. Lauretta said. The samples are also chock-full of carbon, the element that is the building block for life.
Who cares? (Score:2)
Direct link without the paywall: (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.nasa.gov/news-rele... [nasa.gov]
Re:Direct link without the paywall: (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.nasa.gov/news-rele... [nasa.gov]
Why in the fires of Hell does Slashdot post stories with paywalled links? It should be policy NOT to accept a story for publication unless links are accessible to readers without a paywall.
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Generally the person submitting the summary provides the links.
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Generally the person submitting the summary provides the links.
And we have editors that can either reject the story because of a paywall, or notify the submitter that a non-paywalled source is needed.
At least they took more care than Project Scoop (Score:2)
That one just landed and got open by civilians.
1970's Press Department (Score:3)
It's weird how every single NASA press release still has to do "this could help us understand the origins of life on Earth" in 2023.
They had to justify their continued budget in the 70's with some Congressmen who grew up riding horses to town but it seems so anachronistic now.
"We want to know what asteroids are really made of" seems sufficient. Even moreso now that miners are interested.
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We could save a lot of money if Evangelicals ran NASA: "We ain't need to probe the origin of life, everyone knows God-did-it."
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How does Sleepy Joe manage to run the world between all his naps? Enquiring minds want to know!
Re:1970's Press Department (Score:5, Interesting)
It's weird how every single NASA press release still has to do "this could help us understand the origins of life on Earth" in 2023.
They had to justify their continued budget in the 70's with some Congressmen who grew up riding horses to town but it seems so anachronistic now.
"We want to know what asteroids are really made of" seems sufficient. Even moreso now that miners are interested.
I'm pretty interested in the science, and yeah - hearing about the composition of an asteroid not modified by plummeting through the atmosphere is interesting to me long after say - the breathless reports after every Falcon 9 launch about some record or other being set is boring. Rockets aren't new, over 100 year old technology, and the Germans made the basis of all modern Rocketry in the late 1930's early 1940's.
But okay, the carbon is an interesting find once we dig into it - not only for "Life on Earth" but in pristine material, and given the the way that solar systems are formed, it makes a certain argument for perhaps any or most life in the Universe being carbon based.
And the water, well it's obvious that life as we know it needs water. And helps a lot with how Earth got it's water. At one time we were working with the idea that our water came from comets. So now we have reasonable expectations that it came from most every object that accreted on earth, including the Theia impact hypothesis.
And not only scientists are interested. Some politicians believe that the guvmint is hiding solid evidence that Aliens are here now, so they should be interested in what the aliens might be composed of.
It can be a little repetitive sounding, but there is an awesome devil in the details here.
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The only part I dislike is when they seem to imply that finding water molecules somewhere (that isn't hot) is surprising and exciting. Water is literally the third most common molecule in the universe, not something unique about Earth.
space is full of candy (Score:2)
Ignorant, please inform (Score:2)
I learnt it was because Earth's magnetosphere attracted water vapour to Earth's gravity-well.
If the water was inside the clay, why is the planet's surface 2/3rds water?
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I learnt it was because Earth's magnetosphere attracted water vapour to Earth's gravity-well.
If the water was inside the clay, why is the planet's surface 2/3rds water?
Earth's water came from Asteroids, Comets, and there is a hypothesis that Hydrogen in early earth might have played a part as well.
As well, while water covers the majority of the earth, it actually makes up very little of the mass of earth. About .02 percent, roughly. So while initially it seems mind boggling how much water there is, there is hella lot more rocks.
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If the water was inside the clay, why is the planet's surface 2/3rds water?
You may not be aware but most rocks are heavier than water. The rocks sink to the bottom leaving a lot of the water at the top. Some of it is still trapped in the rocks.