Meteors formed in the early days of the solar system may contain liquid water, according to new research, credited to the theory that water and other precursors were brought to life on our planet billions of years ago.
Carbonaceous chondrites are a special group of meteors that trace their origin in the formation of the solar system. When fragments are found on Earth, they include tentacling cuts of information, such as minerals that only appear in the presence of water and organic compounds such as amino acids – some of the building blocks of life.
As a result, carbonaceous cated nitrite has become a leading candidate for how water is depleted on Earth. A great way to be sure would be if a condensate – which, although rare in their fall summer compatriots – regularly affects the earth, flooded over it, and we were lucky enough to find the rock and recover and recover. Were. That.
It is a .com order. The planet Rayugu was only recently The water has been found to be dry Long before Japan arrived there with its Haibusa 2 spacecraft. So far, scientists know that at some point there was a fluid flow on carbonaceous condensates, but they do not know how much that flow has been recently. Earlier dating methods showed that shortly after the formation of the earth, about ago. Billions of years ago, water was present on these rocks.
“All that leads to speculation that any change, and any presence of water, was very ancient. So our test was to say, can there be a young change? “ Simon Turner, an isotope geochemist at McCurry University in Sydney, Australia, said in a video call.. “I mean, there’s still ice on this meteor.” Turner is the lead author of a new paper describing fluid flow in carbonaceous chondritis, Published In the journal Scientific Reports this week.
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A team of researchers from Florida State University, McCurry University and the Natural History Museum in Paris have discovered that these carbonaceous condyles have had a small amount of fluid over the last few years, as far as space and geographical periods go.
All meteors fall, but only later, in what is called a “waterfall.” Turner’s team only used carbon ore carbonates in their research, as they have clear timestamps (i.e. what they could be contaminated) when they came in contact with fresh-space rocks on Earth. The meteorites included in the study came from around: one was the Sutras Mill, where California’s Gold Rush was kicked, while the other landed on a frozen lake in Russia, among many other places in the world.
The research team sampled these celestial rocks and dated their water flows with uranium-thorium dating, in which isotopes of both elements can be measured to determine age. In this case, the question was not the species of the meteorite, but the age at which the liquid was moving inside the rock. Uranium is very mobile in liquids, when there is no thorium, so the team will be able to cut when uranium moves in the meteorite field relative to thorium, seeing that the water is moving around.
“If there was ice on the body and if there was a reason for the ice to melt and move, and that happened over the last million years, you should expect different behavior of uranium and thorium,” Turner said.
In other words, when a liquid is flowing, whether it is on a space rock or on the bank of a river, it rotates around isotopes, leaving a short-term record of that flow. If a lot of time passes then that signature disappears. If isotopes were to be moved in a million years, in particular, the team would have to find that disruption.
Fluidity of fluid The movement seen in some of the team’s specimens is exciting – meaning that carbonaceous chondrites could still contain ice, if they were flowing. As recently as a few thousand years ago as a liquid.
Edward Young, a UCLA geochemist who was not involved with the recent paper, said in an email that the new research was “very interesting” and “elegant.” He noted that others Scientists recently learned about the massive water flow on the planet Bennu, thanks to NASA Ongoing OSIRIS-REx mission.
The next step is to test space rocks that do not come through the Earth’s atmosphere as a fireball, a violent process that precludes exactly how ice melts on these asteroids (samples brought by the spacecraft will be useful). Meanwhile, researchers will juggle around with falling space rocks, keeping an eye on the sky for new evidence of falling.
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