While it's unlikely this really moves the needle in terms of other life in the solar system (which seems like a pretty hard "no" to me as a lay person), it perhaps does have an impact on "rest if the galaxy". Of course the ingredients are "necessary but not sufficient ". However being "abundant" increases the chance of them being present when the other necessary conditions are met.
Let’s wait for the Europa lander and nuclear submarine to make sure. Chances are slim but not zero.
NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#12The theory of physicochemist Arrhenius strongly suggests that we are the descendants of life that arrived on Earth carried by spores from space.
By the time when Arrhenius proposed this theory he did not really have any argument supporting it. Now, there exists only one argument supporting it. The last common ancestor of all cellular living beings that exist on Earth was already a quite complex bacterium. There is no doubt that it was the product of an already very long evolution process. For instance the genetic code that is used, with very small variations,…
of course, it's very unlikely, but it's such a cool idea!
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let’s wait for the Europa lander and nuclear submarine to make sure. Chances are slim but not zero.
We have no plans for anything like that. Few proposals, but nothing concrete. Europa Clipper is what we've got for now.
That's kinda my point... I'm pretty sure I won't live long enough to see it happen, but I hope we plan and launch a mission like that!
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#14While it's unlikely this really moves the needle in terms of other life in the solar system (which seems like a pretty hard "no" to me as a lay person), it perhaps does have an impact on "rest if the galaxy". Of course the ingredients are "necessary but not sufficient ". However being "abundant" increases the chance of them being present when the other necessary conditions are met.
> other life in the solar system (which seems like a pretty hard "no" to me as a lay person), There’s so much we don’t know about the solar system, little bacteria crawling around deep under the crust of a moon or swirling about in a gassy giant doesn’t seem too far fetched. Wormy fishy creatures (or even more complex than that) under the ice of Europa is a bit more of a stretch, but even then I don’t think we’re awa…
Space is big as fuck but when you add time in the mix it's as close to infinite as you can get.
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#15While it's unlikely this really moves the needle in terms of other life in the solar system (which seems like a pretty hard "no" to me as a lay person), it perhaps does have an impact on "rest if the galaxy". Of course the ingredients are "necessary but not sufficient ". However being "abundant" increases the chance of them being present when the other necessary conditions are met.
Life arose on Earth shockingly quickly on Earth as best as we can tell from the fossil record. Especially compared to apparently much more difficult innovations like photosynthesis, mitochondria, or multi-cellularity. I wouldn't at all be surprised if bodies in the solar system with liquid water and active enough geologies to produce consumable chemicals have primitive life.
That shift from "Opportunities for life" being measured based on surface area to volume is dramatic.
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#16While it's unlikely this really moves the needle in terms of other life in the solar system (which seems like a pretty hard "no" to me as a lay person), it perhaps does have an impact on "rest if the galaxy". Of course the ingredients are "necessary but not sufficient ". However being "abundant" increases the chance of them being present when the other necessary conditions are met.
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#17https://phys.org/news/2024-11-ryugu-asteroid-sample-rapidly-...
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#18Given that the Ryugu sample was contaminated, how confident are we that these samples werent also contaminated? https://phys.org/news/2024-11-ryugu-asteroid-sample-rapidly-...
> Key to the curation process was the use of so-called “witness plates”—flat plates made of aluminum and sapphire—that were exposed to all the same conditions as the sample from Bennu, creating a detailed record of potential contaminants.
> If a compound found in the Bennu sample wasn’t on the witness plate, scientists could confidently identify it as originating from Bennu. This is critical when dealing with organic compounds, where contamination can make it hard to distinguish what is truly extraterrestrial.
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the time when Arrhenius proposed this theory he did not really have any argument supporting it. Now, there exists only one argument supporting it. The last common ancestor of all cellular living beings that exist on Earth was already a quite complex bacterium. There is no doubt that it was the product of an already very long evolution process. For instance the genetic code that is used, with very small variations,…
my favourite hypothesis for the first life is the idea that the entire universe might have been habitable for a while: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613 of course, it's very unlikely, but it's such a cool idea!
For life, it is not enough for the ambient temperature at the surface of a planet to be acceptable.
For life to appear, it is necessary that the interior of the planet is much hotter than the surface, so that this thermal non-equilibrium will be converted into chemical non-equilibrium by volcanism.
When the universe had cooled to a habitable temperature after the Big Bang, if any celestial bodies existed they were in thermal equilibrium, so they could not provide any energy for the appearance of life.
The internal heat of a planet normally has 2 sources, the radioactive decay of heavy elements that have been produced only in catastrophic events that have happened late in the history of Universe, e.g. supernova explosions or neutron star impacts, and the residual heat produced from collisions with other planets.
For satellites close to big planets or for planets close to stars there may be also heat produced by tidal deformations.
Such sources of heat are unlikely to have existed in the early Universe, and even supposing that collisions could have existed, in that case the environment with a life-enabling temperature would not have been correlated with the epoch when the entire Universe had a temperature that now is suitable for life.
Moreover life cannot appear without chemical elements up to the iron-cobalt-nickel group, which are the chemical catalysts on which life depends as much as on the structural elements HCNOS.
The iron group elements are generated only late in the lifetime of a star, so life can appear only in celestial bodies that recycle matter from explosions of the first generation stars, billions of years after the Big Bang and long after the Universe had cooled.
Re: NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
#20Given that the Ryugu sample was contaminated, how confident are we that these samples werent also contaminated? https://phys.org/news/2024-11-ryugu-asteroid-sample-rapidly-...
This is a very strong indication that the amino acids in the sample where made by an inorganic process.