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Sugars, Gum, Stardust Found in NASA's Asteroid Bennu Samples
- airstrike 11mo agoBennu is just the perfect brand name for space gummy bears
- troyvit 11mo agoSpace gummy tardigrades (because they can survive in space and their nickname is "water bear")!
- voidUpdate 11mo agoThe title probably wants the original quotes put back in
- cnnlives86 11mo agoAs I’ve been reading findings of extraterrestrial organic molecules recently, I wonder: do we know there was no contamination? I’m going to be sad if it turns out someone sneezed into it and was afraid to tell their manager.
- soco 11mo agoI think the article does a good job clarifying in simple words those questions risen by the slightly click-baity title.
- reactordev 11mo ago>”Once soft and flexible, but since hardened, this ancient “space gum” consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Such complex molecules could have provided some of the chemical precursors that helped trigger life on Earth” That would be some stale big league chew if that were the case. By orders of billions of years. Making it the oldest wad of big league chew we know of in existence. ;)
- foxyv 11mo agoI'm almost certain that the gum in baseball cards originated from the big bang.
- reactordev 11mo agoNot the Big Bang, the Big Ban. The ban of smoking or tobacco products on TV. Up until the 1980s, it was common to see a pitcher up there with a mouth full of Kodiak or Chaw. Spitting their nasty tobacco-stained split all over the mound.
- IAmBroom 11mo ago"I will assume that the experts involved have not taken any reasonable precautions, and learned nothing from the past 60 years of acquired experience in space exploration. I will then ask other non-experts in the field if the experts are minimally competent or not."
- gblargg 11mo agoI was thinking the same as parent while reading this. Mentally this activates the same thinking as on those medical tests with a high false positive rate and low incidence, so that most positives are false. I'd like to see in the article how they rule this out. Ideally I'd like to hear that they have measures in place that would allow accidental lapses in isolation to fail and they'd still be able to tell that it was Earth contamination. It's a reasonable concern and having it addressed (with something more satisfying than "they're experts, duh!") makes this kind of finding all the more interesting.
- pixl97 11mo agoI mean, it's a concern, but there are numerous other odd things in the findings that would not be caused by ground contamination such as the amount of stardust contained in these samples versus other asteroid samples, or the huge amounts of clay/water created minerals found so far. There are plenty of other articles on the isolation procedures they've taken so far to this point including putting off opening the container for months because of a stripped screw.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- sriram_malhar 11mo agoSpot on. "I'm just asking questions".
- Normal_gaussian 11mo agoThere are papers covering contamination prevention and detection for every stage of the mission. There are papers with the designs and intentions before launch and papers with how well it went and their specific findings after return. Here is one sick paper covering some of the clean rooms https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230005897 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230005897
- tedd4u 11mo agoAwesome -- dozens of the top people in their fields have been working on the contamination problem and publishing about it for almost two decades. The curation team was integrated with mission design and operations from the beginning, as early as 2004 (section 3.0). That integration allowed curation-specific needs such as contamination knowledge to be incorporated into the mission design early, when adjustments had minimal cost impact. Not only did this early integration inform planning for sample characterization, cataloging, allocation, and the development of detailed sample handling and containment approaches; it was also an investment in the longer term needs of the community. Here we describe these preparations for OSIRIS-REx, as a reference for sample scientists and curators and as a model for future sample return missions.
- gus_massa 11mo agoMost organic molecules are different from it's mirrored version, and living thing usually produce only one version. But inorganic reactions produce an even mix of 50% and 50%. So in most cases it's easy to spot. Also, some sugars or amino acids are very common here and others very rare, and the commet probably has another mix. Also, the ammount of isotopes of the atoms (like Carbon 14) is probably different.
- jagged-chisel 11mo ago> … gum-like material […] was likely formed in the early days of the solar system > … consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in nitrogen and oxygen.
- IAmBroom 11mo agoAsteroids sound delicious!
- HPsquared 11mo agoCome to think of it, quite a lot of sugary treats have space-themed names. Milky Way, Mars, Starburst, Orbit gum... I'm sure there are others.
- KineticLensman 11mo ago"Galaxy" (in the UK) is the obvious one. Incidentally, Mars bars were named after the Mars family who owned the company that made them, not the planet.
- dylan604 11mo agoAnd where did the family name originate?
- throw46285 11mo agoSame place that the family did.
- esafak 11mo agoIs this a yo mama joke?
- trueismywork 11mo ago
- macrolime 11mo agoSo it's made of extraterrestrial bubblegum, got it.
- snapdeficit 11mo agoI know one theory proposes comets seeded earth with essential materials. But what seeded comets?? It’s just chance with extra steps, no?
- malfist 11mo agoThe big bang did. And following it, supernovae. But there's a lot we don't know and science is always advancing! For example, JWST observed early galaxies are both larger and more diverse materials than we expected. Means there's something new to learn!
- flag_fagger 11mo ago[dead]
- gaoshan 11mo agoWhen Carl Sagan said, "The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself" he was poetically accurate. The comets are seeded with the remains of untold countless exploded stars.
- anechouapechou 11mo agoThere's a theory that at the very beginnings of the universe, as it cooled down, there was a period where the average temperature of the universe was between 0-100º C, meaning the whole universe was within a "habitable" temperature range, and this could have supercharged the creation of the building blocks of life. I think I learned about it on a Veritasium video... Maybe someone knows which one? :)
- Retric 11mo agoVeritasium videos are often extremely misleading. In this case the cooling universe lacked carbon for these organic compounds. Life cares about 0-100c because of water which depends on Oxygen would be missing etc. Just as example in one video he refers to the field outside of the wire carrying the energy for electricity, however EM waves propagate at the speed of light and fall off at the square of distance. Electricity can travel thousands of miles without that kind of falloff but doesn’t propagate as fast because it’s electron density in the wires that causes what we think of as electricity. He then setups up an antenna and … well you get the idea.
- Mikhail_K 11mo agoWhat, sugars and gum, but no sandwich wrappers?
- socketcluster 11mo agoSo they found some sticky unidentified alien slime on an asteroid... This sounds like something straight out of an alien movie.
- stronglikedan 11mo agoWho doesn't like sugars and gum? It's the perfect alien incubation delivery mechanism! I wonder which will be the first scientist to get their chest popped...
- vatsachak 11mo agoAren't we starting to figure out that life (self-organization) is the most likely outcome for planets with our conditions? Maybe "our conditions" are also too strong of a requirement Check out Blaise Arcas on MLST and Nick Land on Dwarkesh. Self organization might just be the second law of thermodynamics in action
- AIorNot 11mo agoYeah or Mike Levin https://youtu.be/5MQq4n2QrNw?si=a7gFLLgQL1Soq0mt https://youtu.be/5MQq4n2QrNw?si=a7gFLLgQL1Soq0mt
- dylan604 11mo ago"planets with our conditions" is doing a lot of work here. how many planets meet that criteria? most of the closest have typcially been labeled "super Earths" so their gravity will be greater than 1g. what effect will that have?
- ASalazarMX 11mo agoIf life has adapted to the crushing pressure of deep ocean, I have hopes that it can adapt to not-so-crushing gravity. I'm sure a lot of our current life could adapt if our gavity was doubled. I'd feel sorry for birds, though.
- dylan604 11mo agoCan trees pull water up to the top in >1g situations? At >1g, the deep ocean pressure would be that much more.
- ASalazarMX 11mo agoQuick googling tells me that trees move water internally by capillarity, and suction caused by leave evaporation, both processes passive. This puts limits on how high the column of water can be raised, yet at 1g we can have monstrous trees like sequoias, so maybe many kinds of trees would die, but the survivors would just grow shorter. Abisal creatures, who knows how much pressure they can adapt to? They have populated our oceans as deep as they can go, the planet has nothing stronger to challenge them.
- antonvs 11mo agoIt figures. The universe is held together by bubble gum and strings.
- dylan604 11mo agothe fact it is called string theory suggests it's just an idea and not known
- procflora 11mo agoShoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff!
- thedrexster 11mo agoAn eternal classic, brother, well done!
- Beijinger 11mo agoBig claims. Solid names. "“All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx,” said Furukawa. “The new discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the molecule RNA are present in Bennu.”" Let's hope it is not a contamination.
- metalman 11mo agosugars,gum, and stardust? so like, somehow,teenage girls have been getting off the planet and hanging around in space and leaving a mess behind, bet it has that wierd artificial cotton candy smell