[meteorite-list] More on Muchison.....

[Shawn Alan]

Darren and List
 
Thank you for the read up on Murchison meteorite on how scientist have identified over 14,000 compounds and counting. While we are on the topic of Murchison meteorite, I came across an article on line that points out these interesting facts and finds on the Murchison as quoted from the article as follows.... 
 
"Presolar grains are the oldest materials in the solar system," says Philipp Heck of the University of Chicago. 
"The ages of the grains clearly indicate that they are older than the solar system."
 But just how old? 
Heck and his colleagues isolated 22 grains from the Murchison meteorite, which is well-known for the 
organic material it contains, and measured how long the grains spent in interstellar space before winding up 
in our nascent solar system. The implied grain ages, reported in a recent paper of the Astrophysical Journal, 
appear to support a hypothesis that our solar system formed after a smaller satellite galaxy crashed into the 
Milky Way around 6 billion years ago."......
 
"From the isotope abundances, the researchers estimate that the majority of grains spent between 3 
and 200 million years in interstellar space before falling into our molecular cloud some 4.6 billion 
years ago."
 
 
Here is the link to the article I found on line.
http://www.astrobio.net/pdffiles/news_3202.pdf
 
and if your up for a read, here is an article on the age of presolar SiC grains found in Murchison meteorite.
 
http://presolar.wustl.edu/ref/Gyngard09b.pdf
 
Enjoy
Shawn Alan
 
 
 
[meteorite-list] Murchison-- chock full o' stuffDarren Garrison cynapse at charter.net 
Tue Feb 16 00:25:30 EST 2010 


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http://news.discovery.com/space/meteorite-crammed-with-millions-of-organic-compounds.html 

Meteorite Crammed with 'Millions' of Organic Compounds 

By Ian O'Neill | Mon Feb 15, 2010 04:52 PM ET 

A meteorite that hit the town of Murchison, Australia, hasn't quit giving up its 
secrets. 

The Murchison meteorite is one of the most studied space rocks because many 
pieces were recovered after it was seen breaking up as it fell through the 
atmosphere in 1969. Approximately 100 kg of the carbonaceous chondrite was 
recovered. 

Carbonaceous chondrites are extremely important to scientists as they were 
formed from material that existed in the solar system's planet-forming disk of 
gas and dust. They are, quite literally, time capsules holding onto a 4 billion 
year old record of the birth of our solar system. 

In this case, the Murchison meteorite has given us another clue as to the 
abundance of organic chemicals that existed before the Earth had formed. In 
fact, this particular meteorite may have originated from material older than our 
sun. 

"We are really excited. When I first studied it and saw the complexity I was so 
amazed," said Dr Phillipe Schmitt-Kopplin, of the Institute for Ecological 
Chemistry in Neuherberg, Germany. 

"Meteorites are like some kind of fossil. When you try to understand them you 
are looking back in time." 

This new research made use of high resolution spectroscopic tools to identify 
the various compounds inside. Although this meteorite has provided scientists 
with vast amounts of information about specific carbon-based organics before, 
this was the first non-targeted study. In other words, the researchers weren't 
tracking down just one type of chemical, they did a broad analysis for all the 
chemicals it might contain. 

And what they found came as a shock, it appears that the primordial solar system 
probably had a higher chemical diversity than present-day Earth. 

In this study, 14,000 specific compounds including 70 amino acids were 
identified. But this number appears to be the tip of the iceberg; the meteorite 
probably contains millions of different organic compounds. More detailed 
analysis will now be carried out. 

But why is this important? To understand the diversity of organic chemicals that 
were floating around a primordial solar system will help us understand how life 
may have appeared on Earth. This particular chunk of carbonaceous chondrite 
drifted through the gas and dust of the early solar system, collecting all the 
basic organic chemistry from around that time, does that mean diverse organic 
chemistry is the "norm" for proto-planetary star systems? 

These organic compounds are known to exist on comets, asteroids and other 
planetary bodies, so what makes Earth the hothouse of life when everywhere else 
seems to be lifeless? 

If organic chemistry is ubiquitous, perhaps planning to "seed" young star 
systems with Earth-based life isn't such a good idea. The conditions for life 
may not be that rare after all.