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Space Science

Carbon From Outer Space Older Than Our Sun 40

Posted by michael from the dust-in-the-wind dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "While looking at interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) found in the Earth's stratosphere, researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis have found carbon older than the Solar System. They identified the organic material by its carbon isotopic composition, different from the one of carbon found on Earth. "Our findings are proof that there is presolar organic material coming into the Solar System yet today," said Christine Floss, the leading scientist. "This material has been preserved for more than 4.5 billion years, which is the age of the Solar System. It's amazing that it has survived for so long." This overview contains more details and references. It also contains pictures including the one of a sample's isotopic structure at a sub-micrometer scale."
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Carbon From Outer Space Older Than Our Sun More

Carbon From Outer Space Older Than Our Sun

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  • About time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shadowbearer ( 554144 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @10:40PM (#8414288) Homepage Journal

    Our findings are proof that there is presolar organic material coming into the Solar System yet today

    I would have been shocked if this hadn't been found eventually - but it's nice to have positive proof.

    Seems to me that this evidence gives a small boost to the Panspermia theory.

    SB

    • Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)

      by xilmaril ( 573709 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @01:14AM (#8414923)
      and for those not familier with the subject (ie most people)

      Svante Arrhenius theorized that bacterial spores propelled through space by light pressure were the seeds of life on Earth. British astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe rekindled interest in panspermia. They also proposed that comets, which are largely made of water-ice, carry bacterial life across galaxies and protect it from radiation damage along the way. Not necessarily a view I subscribe to, but an interesting one nevertheless.

      by Theorellior, of Everything2.com

      • Re:About time (Score:3, Interesting)

        by shadowbearer ( 554144 )
        wrt to E2

        I agree that it's possible, but whether it's actually happened or not, in our particular case, is open to argument. Here's the two arguements I see right now as being the most important.

        For: The timescales involved would allow for plenty of chances for life to propogate, survive the conditions/impacts, etc, and re-establish itself. Somewhat supported by the ubiquity of organic molecules in pre-stellar clouds.

        Against: Assumes that life started elsewhere first. Presumes bacterial spore survi
    • Maybe this is how other civilizations communicate, through biologicals on comets rather than what we have been looking for: spaceships, radio waves, etc. Maybe these comets are an answer to Fermi's Paradox [everything2.com]?

      • Re:About time (Score:2, Interesting)

        by shadowbearer ( 554144 )

        That's an interesting question; but the civilizations would have to be incredibly long-lived, thousands or tens of thousands times longer lived than if they used radio waves.

        I think that one possible answer, and the likely one, to Fermi's Paradox is that civilizations evolve technologically past using radio waves for communication very, very rapidly, in centuries or less. They find some way to communicate using *insert future tech here* that EM level civs haven't discovered yet.

        I doubt we'd be of an

  • isotopic ratios (Score:5, Informative)

    by gumbi west ( 610122 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @10:41PM (#8414290) Journal
    here [lbl.gov] is the isotopic ratio here on earth.
    • 98.90 % C-12
    • 1.10 % C-13

    • Re:isotopic ratios (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, I have a hard time understanding how they could use the ratio of 12 to 13 to date the carbon to 4.5 billion years if both isotopes are stable. Radiocarbon dating of the type we use to analyze fossil remains is based on the decay of C 14, which according to link above has a half life of about 6000 years. That makes it good for archaeology, since human history doesn't go back more than a couple orders of magnitude further, but I don't think you could extrapolate back billions of years that way. You'
      • I think they used the stable isotopes of carbon (12 and 13) and found that it was different from the rest of our solar system.From there, it is clear that the source is different from the rest of our universe, perhaps older (but they don't say how they figured out that it hadn't just blown in since our solar system was formed).

  • Ancient Carbon Origin (Score:5, Funny)

    by no longer myself ( 741142 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @10:50PM (#8414325)
    A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far, Away...

    Jabba the Hut had Lando freeze a bunch of people including Han Solo in Carbonite. He hung Han on the wall where he was later rescued. The rest got launched into space and were used for target practice. This was probably their remains.

    Ah, come on... It's late, it's Friday, and it's supposed to be funny! :-)

  • May not mean anything (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hungus ( 585181 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @10:59PM (#8414356) Journal
    It may not be anything but a statistical anomoly. How we date and locate things has always fascinated me. I.e. this is older because it is underneath this other thing. This volcanic rock is this old because there is this much of a potasium isotope present. We have been acurately recording radiometrics for how long now? 20-30 years? (I know we have been recording them longer but not to the accuracy we can today) So think about the statistics: We look at the decay across 30 years and immediately say it must have a half life of 1.251 billion years? [gsu.edu] excuse me but thats a pretty small sample rate for my tastes. THis example uses K-AR but that just because I found google hits faster than for carbon isotopes .. sme basic priciple applies though not on as large a scale.

    • Re:May not mean anything (Score:5, Interesting)

      by addaon ( 41825 ) <addaon+slashdot@gma i l .com> on Saturday February 28, 2004 @01:06AM (#8414882)
      You are, I suppose, technically correct. It may be nothing but a statistical anomaly. Have you actually, uh, studied statistics? It's pretty easy to figure out the probability of that. It is equally probably that what we observe as gravity is merely a coincidence of random motion, and that the whole solar system go back to it's expected behavior and dissipate into a fine myst tomorrow.
      • Yes it is possible but not equally probable that we could all simultaneously cease to exist . Yes, I have studied statistics to answer your question. And to counter your argument about gravity it is much more like someone saying gravity is 9.8mss cecause everywhere we have looked this was teh case. Now teh universe as a whole? I think we can observe that not only does gravity act in predicatble ways but we can manipulate it with ease ( add mass increase density etc) On the other hand I am talking about obse

        • Re:May not mean anything (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I think your idea over sample times is a bit weak really, if you can accept that natural laws were the same over billions of years, and yes we do have quite some evidence for that. Then the statistically very significant figures we have of radioactive decay now would still hold true then, and the half lives would be accurate.

          As for me, I have some credentials, but I don't think credentials are very important when compared to arguing a point on actual facts. Afterall, even the best of scientists make quite
        • Okay, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The fact that I don't agree with you, then, probably means I'm misunderstanding you. Your original example was that our estimate of half lives may be invalid because of small sample size, yes? However, we've looked at samples on the order of 10^25 atoms, at least... probably 10^30 for uranium and carbon. These are not small samples. The other possibility is that our estimate is exactly correct, but that half life is dependent upon some external factor, which has
        • While you have a point, there are a number of other reasons we have to believe that decay rates don't just randomly change over time. One is that we _do_ have other means of comparison, such as sedimentary evidence. And when these consitently match our decay rate data, that bolsters the decay rate data. Doesn't mean that both might not be off, but it does start to give confirmation. Then we can also measure decay rates in samples newly created through bombardment processes and see that those appear to decay
          • The issue is often ratios of matrials present. In the potasium argon situation dating is done by the present ratio and then dated back to the "balance" point. You would have to know what the balance point ( or origin point) was in order to do such. So how do we find out what that should be? My issue is teh relativeness of these measurements it is one conjecture based on another. I could bring up the issues of Glenrose, Texas (strata dating) or even Mt. St Helens and Mt. Vesuvious (K - Ar dating vs historica
            • Okay, this is where I suspected this was going. The Glenrose, Texas "issue" is one of misidentification of a series of therapod tracks as human prints by a group of people who really, really want to believe that man and dinosaurs existed at the same time because it bolsters their biblical belief that the earth is five to seven thousand years old.

              A lot of strange information doubting the physics of nuclear decay, even tho we have plenty of lab and theoretical basis for same, because once again, decay issues

    • > It may not be anything but a statistical anomoly. How we date and locate things has always fascinated me. I.e. this is older because it is underneath this other thing. This volcanic rock is this old because there is this much of a potasium isotope present. We have been acurately recording radiometrics for how long now? 20-30 years? (I know we have been recording them longer but not to the accuracy we can today)

      If you can make a solid argument, you should be posting to Science too, rather than to Sla

    • Re:May not mean anything (Score:4, Insightful)

      by You're All Wrong ( 573825 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @03:46AM (#8415463)
      Maybe, maybe not.

      Assume that they have 6*10^20 atoms of the stuff. If the half life is a billion years, then they can 'sample' >10^10 decays. That's not a small sample.

      YAW.
    • It may not be anything but a statistical anomoly. How we date and locate things has always fascinated me. .... We look at the decay across 30 years and immediately say it must have a half life of 1.251 billion years? excuse me but thats a pretty small sample rate for my tastes.

      I see your point and agree that using science to know the past is very tricky. In the case of measuring half-lives, the methods are statistically accurate because of the huge sample size in atoms. If you start with 6 x 10^23 atom

  • Vacuum cleaner? (Score:4, Funny)

    by zeux ( 129034 ) * on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:25PM (#8414460)
    looking at interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) found in the Earth's stratosphere

    How do you do that? You catch them with a giant Swiffer mop?
  • It's amazing that it has survived for so long


    Not really, some of you may recall that the law of conservation matter sez that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. So it had to survive. If it hadn't then this would be amazing because it would cast strong evidence against the law of conservatin of matter. I'm mean, really now, what else would it do besides float around in space forever?

    desrever si gis!

  • Well. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @01:36AM (#8415034) Journal
    Seeing that carbon generation is a long way down the chain from the present hydrogen -> helium main cycle our star is in, it is logical to conclude that all carbon here on earth must at one point have come from some extra-solar source.

    So this is news because?

    • Re:Well. (Score:5, Informative)

      by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @12:39PM (#8417111) Homepage
      The Solar System formed out of a single gas and dust cloud resulting from one or more supernovas. This cloud had a characteristic isotopic composition. The carbon these researchers have found has a different composition and so must have originated in a different dust cloud.
  • It would really be surprising if our sun was older than the carbon from outer space.
  • Most chemical elements are older than the solar system. The fusion reactions that happen in our Sun will never produce an element heavier than iron (heavier in terms of atomic mass). These heavier elements are produced only in supernova explosions.

    So, next time you look at a gold ring, remember that his atoms were "baked" in a supernova, a couple of billion years ago...

  • Cosmic age of Uranium (Score:3, Interesting)

    by amightywind ( 691887 ) on Monday March 01, 2004 @01:30PM (#8431574) Journal

    Here is a fun experiment even you slashdot simpletons can do. Uranium isotopes decay at different rates. Today U235/U238 = 1/127. Assuming all of the U on earth was formed at the same time, in the same supernova U235/U238 = 1. If you carry through the calculation for time elapsed you get 6 billion years. Pretty neat. That doesn't make the carbon results seem that extraordinary.

  • How do we know that this carbon they found started out with the same isotope ratio that we have here on earth? That seems like an audacious assumption. Do we have any evidence, for or against this idea?
  • researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis have found carbon older than the Solar System.

    Is not almost all carbon on Earth older than the Sun? I was under the impression that it was pretty much accepted that all elements heavier than hydrogen were made in stars. Since I doubt that much (relatively speaking) made on Sol gets out of the gravity well, that pretty much says our carbon (and all of our other elements, save the little we made outselves or that is the result of natural fision of oth

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