An Unusual Meteorite, More Valuable Than Gold, May Hold Life's Building Blocks (sciencemag.org) 20
Slashdot reader sciencehabit tells the strange story of a 4.5-billion-year-old meteor from "the cold void beyond Jupiter" that sent "blazing fireballs and rocks raining down on farms and fields."
On 23 April 2019, a space rock the size of a washing machine broke up in the skies over Aguas Zarcas, a village carved out of Costa Rica's rainforest. The falling fragments, which crashed through roofs and doghouses, set off a frenzy of hunting — for this rare meteorite soon became more valuable than gold.
Meteorites are not uncommon: Every year, tens of thousands survive the plunge through Earth's atmosphere. But meteorite falls, witnessed strikes that take their name from where they land, are rare — just 1,196 have been documented. And even among that exclusive group, there was something extraordinary about this particular meteorite: The dull stone was, as far as rocks go, practically alive. Aguas Zarcas, as the fragments would soon collectively be called, is a carbonaceous chondrite, a pristine remnant of the early Solar System. The vast majority of meteorites are lumps of stone or metal. But carbonaceous chondrites are rich in carbon — including organic molecules as complex as amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. They illustrate how chemical reactions in space give rise to complex precursors for life; some scientists even believe rocks like Aguas Zarcas gave life a nudge when they crashed into a barren Earth 4.5 billion years ago.
Meteorites are not uncommon: Every year, tens of thousands survive the plunge through Earth's atmosphere. But meteorite falls, witnessed strikes that take their name from where they land, are rare — just 1,196 have been documented. And even among that exclusive group, there was something extraordinary about this particular meteorite: The dull stone was, as far as rocks go, practically alive. Aguas Zarcas, as the fragments would soon collectively be called, is a carbonaceous chondrite, a pristine remnant of the early Solar System. The vast majority of meteorites are lumps of stone or metal. But carbonaceous chondrites are rich in carbon — including organic molecules as complex as amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. They illustrate how chemical reactions in space give rise to complex precursors for life; some scientists even believe rocks like Aguas Zarcas gave life a nudge when they crashed into a barren Earth 4.5 billion years ago.
How valuable? (Score:2, Insightful)
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You could have read that this meteorite is of a very rare type.
Re: How valuable? (Score:2)
It's likely a combination.
Hydrothermal vents are too close to cells in chemistry and electrical properties for it to be coincidence.
However, a rich rain of amino acids, sugars and other useful compounds from a meteorite storm would certainly have boosted the process.
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Kind of sad that in a rag titled "Science" the story is more about how much money you can get from space rocks, rather than the implications for, you know, science.
Did you read the article? I did. It was chock-full of science, without being an experimental report. At the same time, it was a cautionary tale about being ready with deep pockets so that if you want to purchase open-market falls, you have the means to do so.
I'd wonder if you even had read Science before as you appear ready to damn the entire publication because of the contents of a single news article.
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Building Blocks? (Score:2, Troll)
You mean atoms? What is special about that? Or maybe a bit larger, molecules the size of amino acids ? The origins of life are not the infusion of rare building blocks from space. These are trivial first steps.
The origins are the start of autocatalytic networks of molecules which maintaim themselves . You don't hope that rocks from space will provide them. Oh look an amino acid from space! Just what we needed! I don't know how else we could ever have gotten one! You make them locally. The building blocks ar
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Re:Building Blocks? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I am prejudiced. Whenever people talk about building blocks from space I think of panspermia as the divine starter: "I don't understand how life could start on earth so it must have come from elsewhere". So if ribose is added from space is that adding essential ingredients somehow? Or is it mere proof that early earth was already chemically interesting and had good amounts of ribose?
I don't know how implausible it is that ribose would be formed in prebiotic circumstances. My idea about prebiotic origin of l
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more precisely the origin of life as any wibbley wobbly timey wimey reflexively autocatalytic food-generated set.
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It's more like, we've shown ribose formation isn't exclusive to Earth, nor does it need pre-existing life in order for it form. It doesn't lend evidence for or against panspermia (which doesn't solve any problems ... it merely punts it down the road). All the research on abiogenesis never produced ribose or any other sugars with similar complexity. These sugars are the only way we've discovered ... so far ... to create structures that can have variance without most variants losing the ability to self-replic
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Point taken. I can have a vague hope that if the soup is sufficiently varied and rich enough that somehow ribose will be created but the fact that it exists in a meteorite is interesting.
'Punting it down the road' describes very well what i ment.
a space rock the size of a washing machine (Score:2)
...what size washing machine?
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A washing machine from a doll's house.
Obligatory quote (Score:2)
"The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought ‘em anyway. Engineers said the moon rocks were too volatile to experiment on. Tested on ‘em anyway. Ground ‘em up, mixed em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill. Still, it turns out they’re a great portal conductor." - Cave Johnson