"Influenced by the environment?
You mean, like, hockey and beer, eh? How could that be bad?"
Posted on 12/04/2006 9:59:23 AM PST by FYREDEUS
A meteorite that crashed in northwest Canada almost seven years ago might have been able to host the very earliest life forms, according to NASA researchers, which opens the door to the possibility that life could be present elsewhere in the universe.
Mike Zolensky, a cosmic minerologist at the NASA Space Centre in Texas, told CBC Radio the Tagish Lake meteorite is unlike any they have ever examined.
"We always knew it was a rare, very carbon- and water-rich meteorite - and they hardly ever fall on the Earth," said Zolensky. "But we've found since that it's even more unique than that. It's a totally unique meteorite."
Zolensky said tiny bubbles in the rock are organic globules where the universe's earliest life forms could have been able to live, an astonishing discovery from a meteorite thought to be 4.5 billion years old - older than the Earth.
"Perhaps these are like little condos arriving on earth and biology can move in later on," said Zolensky.
"They've survived somehow, intact on an asteroid for over four and a half billion years and where they come from, we don't know. But it's not from around here. It's from somewhere else."
Scientists have speculated life on earth began somewhere between 3.5 and 3.9 billion years ago.
The meteor first attracted attention when a dramatic fireball lit up the early morning skies of the Yukon, northern British Columbia, parts of Alaska, and the Northwest Territories on Jan. 18, 2000.
Fragments of the meteorite scattered across the Southern Lakes region of the Yukon. A week later, outdoorsman Jim Brook discovered a remnant on Tagish Lake between Atlin, B.C., and Carcross, Yukon.
Brook stored the meteorite in a freezer to keep it intact, a move that helped give researchers a chance to study it before it could be influenced by the environment on earth.
"This meteorite is unique because it was recovered frozen ... and some of these samples came to us still frozen," said Zolensky. "It's never happened before, may never happen again, and will always be a bonanza to science for that reason."
Unoccupied condos?
Maybe unoccupied in THIS meteorite...but while this may be a unique FIND it is unlikely it was a unique occurrence among all the uncountable billions of space rocks in our solar system and beyond; if this one has developed such structures it's likely others did as well...
...and were ALL of them unoccupied?
Life abhors an unoccupied ecological niche even more than Nature abhors a vaccuum.
Prospects for Panspermia are looking up methinks...
A spelunker on Coast was talking about some creatures he found chowing down on silica rocks. It is suspected that all rocky planets have bacteria inside the rock. Everywhere in the Milky Way. What might be beyond the Milky Way is not likely to be of direct interest to earthlings, ever.
Hoyle and Wickranshandie (sp?) theorized exactly this many years ago- life arriving from space.
Something is either unique or it's not. Not more unique, or totally unique. Just unique.........
"Influenced by the environment?
You mean, like, hockey and beer, eh? How could that be bad?"
A comet could, undoubtedly, deliver flash frozen produce anywhere ~ but now we are talking about an environment where life could survive ~ even thrive~ while in transit.
Simply being organic is still a long way aways from being life.
ping.
This is an old saw. They have been demolished here on Earth, in their attempts to promote a godless origin of life, so they now choose to move the argument to some imaginary, distant, inscrutable location, so that their theories cannot be demolished by the abundant physical evidence as has happened on earth.
Looking up the anus of absurdity, that is.
Andromeda and M31 both have tendrils of matter that extend to the Milky Way.
So you never know.
M31 is the Andromeda galaxy, which, happens to be coming right at us or the Milky Way at it if you are not a Milky Way Centrist, and we will collide eventually. It will be disruptive, no doubt.
Wow, that is really neat.
Talk about unreasonable expectations of their abilities. Solving how life began just by examining a piece of meteorite.
Guess grant money needs to be justified or maybe they just need more. /sarc
Thanks for the ping!
Unlike Murchison, the Tagish Lake meteor shows no signs of amino acids, but shows a number of cyclic and ring-aromatic carbon chains. Evidence of carbon buckeyballs, or fullerenes, have a characteristic cage-like connections that resemble the geodesic domes promoted by architect and futurist, Buckminster Fuller.
...
Compared to Murchison, Tagish Lake rocks reflect a distinct evolutionary branch for carbon in the early solar system. What carbon-rich material that is soluble, shows a more primitive, less complex category of chemistry.
Oh, well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.