A news release from Arizona State University reveals that an important discovery has been made concerning the molecules available to the early Earth. According to the report, the team, lead by Sandra Pizzarello, discovered that the Sutter's Mill meteorite contains organic material that hasn't been found on other previous meteorites.
The findings from the meteorite, which exploded over California last year, suggest a far greater availability of extraterrestrial organic material — an inventory that could be much more significant than previously thought in molecular evolution and life itself.
Meteors that streak across Earth are usually fragments of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, according to Space.com.
"Their composition therefore has always been seen as an indication that the precursors to the evolution that led to the origins of life could have come from the extraterrestrial material of meteorites," Pizzarello said. "Since the origins of life are utterly unknown, the idea has its merits."
Coincidentally, Sutter's Mill is also the gold discovery site, which lead to the gold rush of 1849.
According to the LA Times, it is believed that the compounds formed when the meteorite's parent asteroid reached high temperatures as a result of colliding with other asteroids in space. Since meteors generally come toward Earth at such hot temperatures, scientists say that early Earth may have had material similar to what was on the Sutter's Mill meteorite.
Analysis of the meteorite suggests that it traveled much further than asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Early reports noted that it was a rare carbon-rich type of meteorite, carbonaceous chondrite, which can carry organic materials exactly like those found in amino acids.
Pizzarello's first looks at the meteorite were actually disappointing because she didn't find anything, but then heated powder extracted from the meteorite with water-a method she had used with meteorites in the past.
"When I went to look at the results, I didn't see anything I had seen before," she said. "There were these polyethers and polyether-esters, which would be desirable for the formations of cells."
"The analyses of meteorites never cease to surprise you... and make you wonder," explains Pizzarello. "This is a meteorite whose organics had been found altered by heat and of little appeal for bio- or prebiotic chemistry, yet, the very Solar System processes that lead to its alteration seem also to have brought about novel and complex molecules of definite prebiotic interest such as polyethers."
The detailed findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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