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

[Timothy Heitz]

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the updated information about Murchison

Tim Heitz



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Shawn Alan" <photophlow at yahoo.com>
To: <cynapse at charter.net>
Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:19 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] More on Muchison.....


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.

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