Posted on 12/07/2006 2:46:55 PM PST by blam
Meteorite's Organic Matter Older Than the Sun, Study Says
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
November 30, 2006
Organic globules found in a meteorite that slammed into Canada's Tagish Lake may be older than our sun, a new study says.
The ancient materials could offer a glimpse into the solar system's planet-building past and may even provide clues to how life on Earth first arose.
"We don't really look at this research as telling us something about [the meteorite itself] as much as telling us something about the origins of the solar system," said Scott Messenger of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Most of the meteorite's material is about the same age as our solar system—about 4.5 billion years—and was likely formed at the same time (tour a virtual solar system).
But the microscopic organic globules that make up about one-tenth of one percent of the object appear to be far older.
In a study appearing in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science, Messenger and colleagues report that isotopic anomalies in the globules suggest that they formed in very cold conditions—near absolute zero.
"What's really striking about this is that these globules clearly could not possibly have formed where [the meteorite] itself formed," Messenger said.
"Under those extreme conditions the air that you'd breathe would be solid ice. You would never find those conditions in the asteroid belt or anywhere close to the sun."
Cold Origins
The Tagish Lake meteorite flashed across Earth's northern sky in January 2000.
Most of the object burned up in the atmosphere, but pieces of it crashed in Canada's frozen, sparsely populated Yukon Territory and northern British Columbia (map of Canada).
"It's the lowest density meteorite that's ever been studied," said Peter Brown, a meteor expert and professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. "It's extremely friable"—easily pulverized—"and the material breaks up very easily."
The object's fragile nature is one of the clues that led some scientists to theorize that Tagish Lake could be the most primitive meteorite ever discovered.
"By primitive we don't mean the oldest chronologically," explained Brown, who is not involved with the Science study.
"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.
Links to Life?
Some scientists speculate that organic matter arriving via ancient meteorites and comets are responsible for the rise of life on Earth.
The unique shape of the newfound globules could be of particular interest to supporters of this theory.
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.
"We don't claim that these things are alive or anywhere close to being alive," NASA's Messenger cautioned.
"But the fact is that this material fell down on Earth, and similar if not identical material has been falling onto the Earth for its entire history.
"Understanding the origins of that matter is inherently tied in with understanding the origins of life."
I sense a Helen Thomas pic incoming...
"But the fact is that this material fell down on Earth, and similar if not identical material has been falling onto the Earth for its entire history."
"Understanding the origins of that matter is inherently tied in with understanding the origins of life."
non sequitur
That's some pretty old sh!*.
No, not non sequitur, but the inference of pan-spermia is only one of a number of possible causalities for the origin of life.
It is a presumptious set of statements, that I'll grant you.
"Meteorite's Organic Matter Older Than the Sun, Study Says"
They should check out some the stuff my wife keeps in the back of the fridge.
Plus, the whole idea that matter could be older than the sun being somehow wonderful and miraculous. The sun was originally former from matter that was older than the sun, and given the huge number of stars in the universe, matter being old is really no surprise, except perhaps for the folks watching Oprah and Dr. Phil, I guess....
BFLR = Bump For Later Reading
Sorry, the existence of this matter is not 'inherently tied in with understanding the origins of life."
That is the non sequitur.
Panspermia is the natural reaction to the realization that it is simply not possible for life as we observe it to have spontaneously poofed itself into existence on this planet given what we observe about life and the conditions here now or in any conceivable past.
Panspermia recognizes that fact and moves the 'a priori' assumption that life arose naturally out into the universe where it can never be proven not to have happened.
I have seen people use the argument that you can't prove that panspermia didn't happen because you can't search the entire universe and prove that the imaginary conditions under which life supposedly arose do not and have not ever existed.
In summary, panspermia merely makes abiogenesis unfalsifiable. Not good and definitely not scientific.
Meteorite yields life origin clue
BBC | Friday, 1 December 2006 | unattributed
Posted on 12/03/2006 12:09:57 AM EST by SunkenCiv
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