It's a good time to become a Costa Rican meteorite-hunter. Plus it may have completed building blocks for life. And while meteorites turn up all over Earth, these shards were special; the asteroid that spawned them was a gentle palate of the ancient solar system, made in the dust in the spinning nebula that would ultimately form our solar system, formed in older celebrities. Along with the meteorites that divides in the case -- collectively called Aguas Zarcas -- belong to a rare class called carbonaceous chondrites, which kind in the wee hours of this solar system's development and are typically packed with carbon. This particular space rock includes complex carbon materials, probably including amino acids (which join to form proteins and DNA) and possibly other, even more intricate building blocks of life.
While other rocky chunks in the very early solar system became parts of planets, this one stayed undamaged and transformed over time only through sunlight-driven chemical reactions which spurred the creation of more and more complex chemical compounds.
A previous meteor that exploded over Murchison, Australia, in 1969 had comparable features. Amino acids found in its clay, Joshua Sokol reported in Science, helped spread the notion that life on Earth might have originated from compounds delivered in meteorites. And such as the Murchison meteorite, this Aguas Zarcas fragment includes dust from the ancient, earlier Milky Way, before our sun shaped.
Studies of this new meteorite continue to be faulty, Sokol wrote. But researchers are excited that they can examine it using contemporary techniques, searching for complex organic chemicals ---- perhaps even proteins ---- even if they did formerly exist within the Murchison meteorite have long since vanished, degrading in the planet's atmosphere. (The Murchison meteorite very closely resembled Aguas Zarcas, also if Aguas Zarcas comprised proteins then Murchison likely did as well, although the opportunity to detect them has been lost.) Already, there's evidence of amino acids in this Aguas Zarcas fragment not found elsewhere on Earth.
Aguas Zarcas shards can provide the most pristine samples of the ancient solar system and pre-solar dust cloud. But landing as they failed at the Costa Rican rainforest, Sokol reported, there's still the chance of contamination.
Down the road, more pristine samples might become available. The Japanese Hayabusa2 probe, launched in 2014 with the goal of sampling the asteroid Ryugu, is already on its way back with Ryugu dust onboard, a sample that may contain carbonaceous chondrite, Sokol noted.
"These asteroid scraps will be truly pristine, having never touched on the atmosphere sat atop rainforest soil," Sokol wrote.
However, for now, Aguas Zarcas is your very best source of spacefaring carbon compounds available.
While other rocky chunks in the very early solar system became parts of planets, this one stayed undamaged and transformed over time only through sunlight-driven chemical reactions which spurred the creation of more and more complex chemical compounds.
A previous meteor that exploded over Murchison, Australia, in 1969 had comparable features. Amino acids found in its clay, Joshua Sokol reported in Science, helped spread the notion that life on Earth might have originated from compounds delivered in meteorites. And such as the Murchison meteorite, this Aguas Zarcas fragment includes dust from the ancient, earlier Milky Way, before our sun shaped.
Studies of this new meteorite continue to be faulty, Sokol wrote. But researchers are excited that they can examine it using contemporary techniques, searching for complex organic chemicals ---- perhaps even proteins ---- even if they did formerly exist within the Murchison meteorite have long since vanished, degrading in the planet's atmosphere. (The Murchison meteorite very closely resembled Aguas Zarcas, also if Aguas Zarcas comprised proteins then Murchison likely did as well, although the opportunity to detect them has been lost.) Already, there's evidence of amino acids in this Aguas Zarcas fragment not found elsewhere on Earth.
Aguas Zarcas shards can provide the most pristine samples of the ancient solar system and pre-solar dust cloud. But landing as they failed at the Costa Rican rainforest, Sokol reported, there's still the chance of contamination.
Down the road, more pristine samples might become available. The Japanese Hayabusa2 probe, launched in 2014 with the goal of sampling the asteroid Ryugu, is already on its way back with Ryugu dust onboard, a sample that may contain carbonaceous chondrite, Sokol noted.
"These asteroid scraps will be truly pristine, having never touched on the atmosphere sat atop rainforest soil," Sokol wrote.
However, for now, Aguas Zarcas is your very best source of spacefaring carbon compounds available.