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‘Hypatia’ Stone Contains Compounds Not Found in the Solar System
- taneq 9y agoIt was found, along with all of the compounds that it contains, in western Egypt. Which, last I checked, is in the Solar System.
- pavlov 9y agoNot according to Dan Quayle...
- simonh 9y agoThe idiom used in the title has a commonly well understood meaning in English. It basically means ‘here is a thing found in this context that is usually not found in that context and therefore probably came from somewhere else’. I can see that technically it’s incorrect, but pretty much any native English speaker would understand what is meant. The contention is that the stone is not composed of material from the cloud of dust and gas which formed our solar system, and therefore does not share that common origin with the other material in our solar system we are familiar with.
- cmroanirgo 9y agoIt's incorrect everywhere, except for click-bait purposes. A compound in Egypt clearly places it in the solar system.
- taneq 9y agoIt's been interesting watching the score on my original comment, which was (I thought) pretty clearly tongue-in-cheek. It first got quite a few upvotes, and now is well on its way to being buried - I'm not sure if that's just noise, or if it indicates changing demographics (with different attitudes towards flippancy) reading HN at different times of day. Anyway, yeah, it's not hard to figure out what the title meant.
- Gravityloss 9y agoUsually jokes don't get better by explaining, but this was an exception.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agoInterestingly, everything found in the solar system is simulatneously both from the solar system AND is ultimately of extrasolar origins, since the solar system can from gas and dust from elsewhere when it was created.
- posterboy 9y agoYou need to start thinking in 4D
- perlgeek 9y ago> A new study led by geologists at the University of Johannesburg found that compounds in the Hypatia stone are distinct from anything discovered in the solar system. The researchers therefore conclude that parts of the rock formed before the solar system, and if these compounds are not presolar, the prevailing idea that the solar system formed from a nebula of homogenous gas is called into question. Couldn't it have come from outside our solar system, in which case it is pretty much irrelevant whether it is presolar or not? Granted, that would also make it pretty exciting :-) It seems a bit premature to question the formation theory of the solar system, based on a single rock from which we don't know if it even formed inside the solar system.
- nraynaud 9y agoIt might be an issue of travel time.
- ljoshua 9y agoI originally read this as "It might be an issue of time travel," which would be another very fun possibility to consider. ;)
- nraynaud 9y agoI went to read the paper and I am wrong, they looked at the minerals and the physical conditions to form them, and they are consistent with a place and a phase of the creation of the solar system.
- unchocked 9y agoProbably not. Oumuamua, the first extrasolar object we've tracked through the solar system, has a hyperbolic excess velocity of ~30km/s, or 1/10,000 of light speed. So in a billion years, such an object could travel 100k light years, or the diameter of the entire galaxy. Sub-relativistic interstellar travel is very slow on human timescales, but fast on geologic ones.
- jacobush 9y agoYes, I'd also go with the "Alien spaceship crashed in Africa 28 million years ago" theory. :-)
- russdill 9y agoThis should answer a lot of questions people have about the article: http://www.astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2017/10/meteorite-origins http://www.astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2017/10/meteorit...
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- INTPenis 9y agoI understand what the article is trying to say but the title is kinda funny. Compounds not found in the solar system. By the race that has not even left its little corner of the solar system yet. Sure we have spectral analysis but fact remains there are parts of the solar system we can't investigate. So the title is a bit amusing and click-baitey. It's like saying "I haven't found my keys yet and I've only looked around my desk".
- amelius 9y ago> The mysterious Egyptian rock contains micro-mineral compounds not found on Earth And apparently, Egypt is not located on Earth.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agoAnd doesn't everything in the solar system ultimately have extrasolar origins?
- _wmd 9y agoNitpicking of this sort is incredibly annoying, it's obvious they mean the presence of the compounds does not match current theories of the origin of the solar system.
- Retra 9y agoThings can only be found in places you can look.
- calcifer 9y ago> Named for Hypatia of Alexandria, the first prominent Western woman astronomer How is a middle-eastern woman who lived circa ~400AD "western"? "The west" didn't take the lead in science until much, much later.
- filmor 9y agoAlexandria was founded as a Greek city and stayed Hellenistic until the Islamic Invasion 600 something. Wikipedia lists Hypatia as "Greek", Greek and Roman culture is usually counted as "western". It could also be meant in contrast to "eastern" as in Chinese and Indian astronomy.
- weeksie 9y agoIn any case Egypt is certainly not in the "middle east"
- filmor 9y agoIt is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East (the Near East then being the Balkan). In other languages (e.g. in German) one calls this part "Near East", "Middle East" is Iran -> India, "Far East" is South-East Asia, China, etc.
- weeksie 9y agoHuh, never heard it used in such a way as to include Egypt. I've always heard Egypt included in MENA (Middle East/North Africa). There you go.
- asdjasldkjkljd 9y agoMaybe consider not being so blindly confident in the future. :)
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
- jlebrech 9y agonow did it crash to earth or did it land?
- intrasight 9y agoTitle should have been "ratios of compounds"
- overcast 9y agoThat wouldn't have attracted nearly as many clicks.
- theptip 9y ago> There are also grains of a compound consisting of mainly nickel and phosphorus, with very little iron, a mineral composition never observed before on Earth or in meteorites The title is correct.
- intrasight 9y agoThen I am just not familiar with this use of the term "compound". I was thinking synonymous with "mineral", as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral "Minerals are chemical compounds, and as such they can be described by fixed or a variable formula." But now I think it means like: http://www.scienceclarified.com/everyday/Real-Life-Earth-Science-Vol-2/Rocks-Key-terms.html http://www.scienceclarified.com/everyday/Real-Life-Earth-Sci... "COMPOUND: A substance made up of atoms of more than one element, chemically bonded to one another"
- apo 9y agoYes. As a chemist, this was a very frustrating read. However, I found a concise summary in the abstract to the original article: A lack of silicate matter sets the stone apart from interplanetary dust particles and known cometary material. This, along with the dual intermingled matrices internal to it, could indicate a high degree of heterogeneity in the early solar nebula. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703717307962?via%3Dihub http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703717...
- simonh 9y agoNo, not at all, it's ratios of elements that form a compound. Some of the compounds found are predominantly composed of elements that are expected to be minor constituents, particularly carbon, which is an element.
- macinjosh 9y agoI do not see how they can categorically state the compounds are not from our solar system. We've barely begun to explore our solar system. Seems arrogant to assume such things.
- simonh 9y agoTake a chill pill. They're not assuming anything, they're making a hypothesis based on the available evidence. The paper title even includes the words "A contribution to the debate on it's origin". That hardly looks like a final pronouncement.
- jmfytpxt 9y agoWait... we can form natural diamonds from carbon by sending coal into orbit and finding it after it comes back down to Earth? Where do I send my money?