Posted on 02/19/2025 6:03:49 AM PST by Red Badger
Colorized microscopic image of sodium carbonate deposit on Ryugu sample. Credit: KyotoU/Toru Matsumoto
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Deposits Found on a Nearby Asteroid Point to Salty Water in the Outer Solar System
Scientists have uncovered salt minerals in samples from asteroid Ryugu, pointing to a past with liquid water. The presence of these salts suggests that Ryugu’s parent body once hosted a warm, saline environment before the water vanished. This discovery could help us understand the role of water in shaping planets and moons across the Solar System.
Ryugu’s Salty Secret: What Scientists Found
Asteroids that pass near Earth often spark concern about potential collisions, no matter how unlikely. However, their proximity also presents valuable opportunities to study the universe. One such asteroid, Ryugu, measuring about 900 meters across and part of the Apollo group, has recently provided new insights into the search for life’s building blocks beyond Earth.
Researchers from Kyoto University have discovered salt minerals in samples collected from Ryugu during Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission. These deposits, which include sodium carbonate, halite, and sodium sulfates, suggest that liquid saltwater once existed within Ryugu’s parent body.
Preserving Clues from Space
Before analyzing the samples, scientists suspected that Ryugu might contain compounds not typically found in meteorites. They anticipated the presence of highly water-soluble materials that would react quickly with Earth’s moisture, making them difficult to detect unless studied in their original, space-preserved state.
“Careful handling allowed us to identify the delicate salt minerals, providing a unique glimpse into Ryugu’s chemical history,” says corresponding researcher Toru Matsumoto.
Ryugu’s Past: A Watery Beginning?
Experts believe the asteroid was once part of a larger parent body that existed about 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after the formation of the solar system. This parent body would have been heated by radioactive decay, creating an environment of hot water below 100°C. While Ryugu and its grains did not contain any moisture, questions remain about how the liquid water was lost.
The Vanishing Act: How Did Water Disappear?
“These crystals tell us how liquid water disappeared from Ryugu’s parent body,” says Matsumoto. The salt crystals dissolve easily in water, suggesting that they could only have precipitated within highly saline water and in conditions with a limited amount of liquid.
“We hypothesized that as fractures exposed the saltwater to space or as the parent body cooled, this liquid could have either evaporated or frozen,” Matsumoto explains. “The salt minerals we’ve found are the crystallized remnants of that water.”
Comparing Ryugu to Other Icy Worlds
The deposits could prove crucial in comparing the evolved water in the dwarf planet Ceres – located in the Asteroid Belt – and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, since researchers believe these icy bodies harbor subsurface oceans or liquid reservoirs. They expect sodium carbonates and halite will be found in surface deposits on Ceres, in water plumes from Saturn’s satellite Enceladus, and on the surfaces of Jupiter’s satellites Europa and Ganymede.
A New Key to Planetary Evolution
Since salt production is closely linked to the geological settings and brine chemistry in these aqueous bodies, the discovery of sodium salts in the Ryugu samples provide new insights for comparing the role that water has played in the development of planets and moons in the outer Solar System.
Reference:
“Sodium carbonates on Ryugu as evidence of highly saline water in the outer Solar System”
by Toru Matsumoto, Takaaki Noguchi, Akira Miyake, Yohei Igami, Megumi Matsumoto, Toru Yada, Masayuki Uesugi, Masahiro Yasutake, Kentaro Uesugi, Akihisa Takeuchi, Hayato Yuzawa, Takuji Ohigashi and Tohru Araki, 18 November 2024, Nature Astronomy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02418-1
Carbonate? Wasn’t that used to freeze Han Solo? They should look for a body in there.
Under that salt, could be a long-dead vast evil city. Due to all the corruption and fornications, long since turned to salt.
Carbonite. Like the backup service. Named for the substance you referenced. Or...was it sarcasm?
What if the asteroid belt is an exploded planet that had oceans with salt in it?
Yes!
And no wonder I can’t freeze any of my enemies. I bought the wrong thing!
Every atom of every molecule on Earth and the Sun and all the planets and asteroids came from somewhere else. All the metals found on Earth and elsewhere were created inside a star’s furnace. When that star went nova or supernova, as the case may be, all that material was flung out into space to eventually coalesce into our Sun and its planetary retinue, to continue the cycle once again................
When did our Sun go nova and spit out a bunch of rocks? I’ve never heard about this.
No our Sun, but some other star billions of years ago.
We are literally made of stardust..................
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
Joni Mitchell got it right.....................
But she did get the Timeline off by a little bit, should be at least 5 billion year old carbon................
Why yes of course, and tiny little,microbes from which all life miraculously defied impossible odds agaisnt it, usurped natural law, and did supernatural things in order to become the billions of species we have today and in the past.
Hard to tell. Some of that carbon doesn’t have a clearly marked production or expiration date.
Why 100°C?
Was the water at one sea level atmosphere of pressure?
Remarkable!
Note the scale of the SEM image is 10 µm, about ¹⁄₁₀th the diameter of a single hair.
Pretty small evil city.
How many demons can dance on the head of a pin?
It’s amazing how a simple little algae cell in a pool of water can take a carbon dioxide molecule and split it in two, retaining the carbon and freeing up an Oxygen molecule for us to breathe, all using just a few photons of light and some water.
But for a human to be able to do it requires a laboratory full of equipment....
More likely that two roughly Mars sized planets collided, something similar happened here, giving us the Moon.
But let's suppose it did explode. How?
According to the current model of planetary formation when a pile o' rocks gets big enough mutual gravity squishes them down, the pressure and radioactive decay of some of the elements melts them together.
Heavier elements gravitate to the center.
Uranium is heavy.
Could it be possible that enough uranium ends up in close proximity to do the 'splody thing?
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