amiyes acids
June 8, 2022 2:49 AM Subscribe
Amino acids found in asteroid samples collected by Japan's Hayabusa2 probe. More than 20 types of amino acids have been detected in samples Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe brought to Earth from an asteroid in late 2020, a government official said Monday, showing for the first time the organic compounds exist on asteroids in space.
This is what the researchers were hinting at last December:
JAXA to announce "major discovery" about asteroids next spring
This is what the researchers were hinting at last December:
JAXA to announce "major discovery" about asteroids next spring
Just 5.4 grams of material from an asteroid 300 million kilometers away...
posted by lazaruslong at 2:50 AM on June 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
in terms of both impact and technical achievement, I’d love to put this one above the other bullshit headlines in our local news today
posted by rongorongo at 4:15 AM on June 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 4:15 AM on June 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
This is very cool.
I'm not entirely sure it's surprising, in a solar system dripping with PAHs and other complex molecules that come together without even needing surfaces. But, I'm sure there are subtle things I'm missing. It's neat, even if I don't entirely understand the significance of it. Thanks!
posted by eotvos at 7:08 AM on June 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm not entirely sure it's surprising, in a solar system dripping with PAHs and other complex molecules that come together without even needing surfaces. But, I'm sure there are subtle things I'm missing. It's neat, even if I don't entirely understand the significance of it. Thanks!
posted by eotvos at 7:08 AM on June 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Observers continue to confirm the weak anthropic principle.
posted by TheHuntForBlueMonday at 7:28 AM on June 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by TheHuntForBlueMonday at 7:28 AM on June 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
I'm eager to see the peer-reviewed publication(s) on this.
If you want to totally nerd out on Hayabusa2, I suggest you get your hands on the book Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample Return Mission: Technological Innovation and Advances, which landed in my mailbox yesterday. Although I suppose I should finish reading The Pluto System After New Horizons first.
I like big books and I cannot lie.
posted by neuron at 9:02 AM on June 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
If you want to totally nerd out on Hayabusa2, I suggest you get your hands on the book Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample Return Mission: Technological Innovation and Advances, which landed in my mailbox yesterday. Although I suppose I should finish reading The Pluto System After New Horizons first.
I like big books and I cannot lie.
posted by neuron at 9:02 AM on June 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
It's neat, even if I don't entirely understand the significance of it. Thanks!
"Life is almost certainly far more common than anyone realizes, and we are still capable of building miracles."
posted by mhoye at 11:14 AM on June 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
"Life is almost certainly far more common than anyone realizes, and we are still capable of building miracles."
posted by mhoye at 11:14 AM on June 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
I have two questions:
1. Is this the first time we've brought back actual samples of organic material from space? I understand scientists have been detecting extraterrestrial organic compounds for some time, including in meteorites found on Earth, but I'm not clear if this is the first time we've found this kind of thing in samples we actually went out and collected.
2. Do these amino acids take the form of a test tube full of slime which, when bombarded with radiation by scientists, will mutate into some kind of alien creature for us to kill and/or have sex with?
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:23 AM on June 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
1. Is this the first time we've brought back actual samples of organic material from space? I understand scientists have been detecting extraterrestrial organic compounds for some time, including in meteorites found on Earth, but I'm not clear if this is the first time we've found this kind of thing in samples we actually went out and collected.
2. Do these amino acids take the form of a test tube full of slime which, when bombarded with radiation by scientists, will mutate into some kind of alien creature for us to kill and/or have sex with?
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:23 AM on June 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
even if I don't entirely understand the significance of it.
As an explanation for abiogenesis--the beginning of life on Earth or elsewhere--it is not significant. The article does a horrible job of conveying the state of the field. I honestly came ready to be enthusiastic despite the headline but it pissed me off.
It's not hard to get amino acids without life. The Urey/Miller experiment did it in no time at all, geologically speaking, in a test tube. We've known they were on comets for a while. I think people assumed they are on asteroids on many planets or moons with carbon and energy fluxes. I don't know of any serious biologists who think the extraterrestrial seeding theory solves anything; Crick argued for it but Crick was honestly a bit of a dilettante for a lot of his career.
The problem is that getting amino acids in a primordial soup gives you a dilute primordial soup containing amino acids. They don't do anything, and you need some mechanism to concentrate them and keep them together--which doesn't happen in solution. Then you need energy moving through the concentrated area to make interesting things happen.
I'm a bit behind on my reading, and certainly am not an expert, but I believe the overall consensus among active researchers on abiogenesis on Earth is that the most exciting line of inquiry is alkaline sea vents; Nick Lane has written on this in several good, accessible books though admittedly he's not a disinterested party. IIUC most models put amino acids as secondary or even tertiary in the process, after you have protocells formed and with some basic metabolic processes.
Anyway, I thought I could avoid complaining for once on this style of popular article, I failed, but let me say this: Space exploration is great and it's really cool to see more countries like Japan doing more great missions and increasing the technical expertise of the human race and it's a far better use of our resources than mining blockchain or throwing rockets at neighboring countries. I just wish write ups accepted that this can be interesting on its own terms and didn't feel the need to exaggerate the implications for "alien life" or even worse our only evolution.
posted by mark k at 2:58 PM on June 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
As an explanation for abiogenesis--the beginning of life on Earth or elsewhere--it is not significant. The article does a horrible job of conveying the state of the field. I honestly came ready to be enthusiastic despite the headline but it pissed me off.
It's not hard to get amino acids without life. The Urey/Miller experiment did it in no time at all, geologically speaking, in a test tube. We've known they were on comets for a while. I think people assumed they are on asteroids on many planets or moons with carbon and energy fluxes. I don't know of any serious biologists who think the extraterrestrial seeding theory solves anything; Crick argued for it but Crick was honestly a bit of a dilettante for a lot of his career.
The problem is that getting amino acids in a primordial soup gives you a dilute primordial soup containing amino acids. They don't do anything, and you need some mechanism to concentrate them and keep them together--which doesn't happen in solution. Then you need energy moving through the concentrated area to make interesting things happen.
I'm a bit behind on my reading, and certainly am not an expert, but I believe the overall consensus among active researchers on abiogenesis on Earth is that the most exciting line of inquiry is alkaline sea vents; Nick Lane has written on this in several good, accessible books though admittedly he's not a disinterested party. IIUC most models put amino acids as secondary or even tertiary in the process, after you have protocells formed and with some basic metabolic processes.
Anyway, I thought I could avoid complaining for once on this style of popular article, I failed, but let me say this: Space exploration is great and it's really cool to see more countries like Japan doing more great missions and increasing the technical expertise of the human race and it's a far better use of our resources than mining blockchain or throwing rockets at neighboring countries. I just wish write ups accepted that this can be interesting on its own terms and didn't feel the need to exaggerate the implications for "alien life" or even worse our only evolution.
posted by mark k at 2:58 PM on June 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
a test tube full of slime
Scientists announce a breakthrough in determining life's origin on Earth—and maybe Mars
Scientists announce a breakthrough in determining life's origin on Earth—and maybe Mars
Scientists at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution announced today that ribonucleic acid (RNA), an analog of DNA that was likely the first genetic material for life, spontaneously forms on basalt lava glass. Such glass was abundant on Earth 4.35 billion years ago. Similar basalts of this antiquity survive on Mars today.also btw :P
- This 830-million-year-old crystal might contain life. And we're about to open it - "Baxter said these findings weren't just a major step in studying the origins of life on Earth, but also opened the door to finding life on other planets. 'And when we're thinking about Mars, we're talking about billions of years, probably, since microbial life could have been flourishing in the waters on that planet. And so we really need longer experiments in rocks that have been around longer on our planet in order to understand what could happen on Mars,' Baxter said. And maybe, just maybe, they could move us another step closer to finding evidence of aliens."
- Study Reveals Insights Into Mitochondrial Ribosome Production - "The mitochondria are the cells' powerhouses that convert energy locked in our food into a functional 'energy currency' for the cells. They also have their own protein synthesis factories called ribosomes, which have a different appearance to those found in the cellular cytoplasm. However, little has been known about how the mitochondrial ribosomes are produced – until now."
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