Huge congratulations to the teams involved in this mission. Having such a large quantity of prehistoric asteroid securely in our possession is a wild feat of engineering and science.
Looking forward to more exciting news... this news is based on the "extra" material that was stuck outside the main chamber.
Kurzgesagt just posted a video that speculates that life was possible every where when the entire universe was at the temperature range of liquid water as it cooled after the big bang.
This would fall under the logical fallacy of attacking the character of the outlet, and not actually criticising the content.
The content of the video that was linked, can be described as "in theory the universe was xyz so abc could have been a thing". Also known as non-serious entertainment.
Your link is irrelevant in this conversation, as the criticisms involved are entirely political. If the linked video was related to renewables, nuclear energy, etc then it might have been relevant.
In other words, it's okay to give positive attention to entities who have subverted their audiences in the past, so long as what they're currently saying is warm and fuzzy? Quite an interesting, yet dangerous stance
That is one of the more mind-bending hypotheses I've seen, and ... there's some plausibility to the argument. Proof would be exceedingly challenging to come by, though sample returns from extra-solar-system bodies which show evidence of common-ancestor biology might occur.
Contradictory evidence might be the establishment of proto-genetic sequences which are capable of encoding at least simple proteins, and some evidence that the development of such capabilities in a biologically-naive environment (that is: without any competition from existing life forms) is more rapid than subsequent evolutionary development. A key concept that needs to be kept in mind when considering the evolution of any system --- biological, technological, informational, etc. --- is that primordial species and forms need not be competitive against any current exemplars with which we're familiar, but only those which exist in their own contemporaneous environment. It's a lot easier to get started when things are just getting started....
I do note that the idea that the entire Universe on average was within the Golidlocks temperature zone might well also mean that localised places and times were subject to vastly greater levels of ionising or other radiation which would be highly disruptive to life.
That said ... the idea that conditions suitable for biological activity literally once pervaded the Universe and are now only found in very localised circumstances orbiting a small subset of stars and limited to rocky planets with significant water ... is both epic and poetic. Literally sparks fading from an all-encompassing explosion....
The main source for the hypothesis appears to be:L Loeb, A. (2014): "The habitable epoch of the early Universe". International Journal of Astrobiology, vol. 13, 4."
It's been pointed out to me elsewhere that "Abraham Loeb" of Harvard University is in fact the same person as "Avi Loeb", of the same institution. Who ... has a certain fixation on extraosolar intelligences.
Which somewhat takes the shine / bloom off this for me.
Once in a while you hear something you never heard or thought of before. This was one such time, and I cherish those moments that seem to become rarer and rarer. It is not that I know everything, but on a shallow level I have heard about a lot. This especially goes for history. When I was young, I did not have much continuity in my understanding of history. I knew some events here and there, but mostly there were voids in my knowledge. Over time, I have filled in many of the voids. Not to some deep level, but to a level that when someone mentions something in common contexts, I have usually heard about it before. It is always possible to go deeper, but I would like it better to learn more breadth-first so to say.
Edit: didn't see any academic paper linked in the article (assume they're still working on it all) but the following is mentioned
> In a preliminary analysis of some of the dust, Lauretta said scientists hit the jackpot with a sample that is nearly 5 percent carbon by mass and has abundant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals.
In astrobiology (and I think also in biology and most of chemistry) it means any molecules that contain carbon, with a few exceptions (exceptions include carbon dioxide and diamond - they don't count as organic). Strange definition, perhaps, but I'm certain that's what it means in astrobiology.
Organic molecules are not necessarily in living things and, indeed, interstellar dust clouds contain huge quantities of amino acids and other organic molecules which most astronomers believe have never been near a living thing.
There's no terribly good definition of organic molecules in chemistry. The traditional definition is something that required a living organism to produce it, until inorganic synthesis of organic urea ruined that idea. The typical rule of thumb is an organic compound contains C-C and C-H bonds, but there's a whole host of exceptions to that rule (including urea, which lacks both C-C and C-H bonds).
The best I can come up with is that organic chemistry is the study of the interactions of a set of common structural motifs (called functional groups), and an organic molecule is something that contains those functional groups.
Be grateful these astronomers even made that distinction. They might have just said this stuff (or at least the parts of it that aren’t Hydrogen) was ‘metallic’ and left it at that.
Happily, it's become okay for them to talk about astrobiology. It was mostly taboo until a few years ago. (Just speculating here, but I think it was the discovery of lots of exoplanets that caused astrobiology to become permissible.)
Unspecified in this article, but organics we've found in meteorites (fallen asteroids and comets, mostly) include the same carbohydrates, fatty acids, nucleic acids, and amino acids that all known life is built from.
In the broadest sense, organics could refer to any molecule of carbon and hydrogen, however I don't think that's how it's used here.
> Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.
> In chemistry, many authors consider an organic compound to be any chemical compound that contains carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds, however, some authors consider an organic compound to be any chemical compound that contains carbon.
Thanks! One of the interesting features are the screws used.
The limiting factor with many fasteners – including those with the classic Phillips drive system – is the amount of torque that can be put through it. A greater torque requirement has traditionally meant either that larger fasteners have had to be used, or more of them. Either way, significant weight is added to a joint. . . . [T]he ACR Torq-Set Drive System . . . is an offset cruciform drive system that allows more torque to be applied.
Torq-set bits are similar to Phillips-head bits, but the four arms of its central cross are offset from each other. This design helps to prevent tampering, and makes the screw ideal for use in aerospace applications.
Well, (in my non-material science engineer mind) you can use forced surface area as an approximation of the theoretical maximum torque that can be applied. The Robertson surfaces are not perpendicular to turning force and has less surface area at the outermost part of the screw. Thus I’d estimate that offset cruciform is superior in that regard.
On the other hand, the Roberson might be cheaper to produce and have sufficient torque for a particular application so Torq-set might be overkill.
I'm guessing it's a bullet point for use more on terra ferma. Like those stupid keys for light switches in public places, vending machines, etc. They are ridiculously easy to obtain keys that work if someone is inclined. It's just not something so common that everyone has two or three in various drawers in their home
Most likely the picture was taken with a monochrome sensor with a filter applied tuned to a specific wavelength. That's more valuable than a color filter, which is made up of a mosaic of single pixel individual red, green and blue filters, interpolated to produce a RGB image.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadLooking forward to more exciting news... this news is based on the "extra" material that was stuck outside the main chamber.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOiGEI9pQBs
Either way I don't see why one should care about funding/sponsorship in the context of a "gee whiz" video.
The content of the video that was linked, can be described as "in theory the universe was xyz so abc could have been a thing". Also known as non-serious entertainment.
Your link is irrelevant in this conversation, as the criticisms involved are entirely political. If the linked video was related to renewables, nuclear energy, etc then it might have been relevant.
The reputation and/or background of a source should not affect the criticism of the content.
If the content of an article or video is good, the reputation of the source is not that relevant.
Vice versa again, a outlet having a good reputation should not prevent you from judging a bad article as bad.
Contradictory evidence might be the establishment of proto-genetic sequences which are capable of encoding at least simple proteins, and some evidence that the development of such capabilities in a biologically-naive environment (that is: without any competition from existing life forms) is more rapid than subsequent evolutionary development. A key concept that needs to be kept in mind when considering the evolution of any system --- biological, technological, informational, etc. --- is that primordial species and forms need not be competitive against any current exemplars with which we're familiar, but only those which exist in their own contemporaneous environment. It's a lot easier to get started when things are just getting started....
I do note that the idea that the entire Universe on average was within the Golidlocks temperature zone might well also mean that localised places and times were subject to vastly greater levels of ionising or other radiation which would be highly disruptive to life.
That said ... the idea that conditions suitable for biological activity literally once pervaded the Universe and are now only found in very localised circumstances orbiting a small subset of stars and limited to rocky planets with significant water ... is both epic and poetic. Literally sparks fading from an all-encompassing explosion....
The main source for the hypothesis appears to be:L Loeb, A. (2014): "The habitable epoch of the early Universe". International Journal of Astrobiology, vol. 13, 4."
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journa...>
Additional sources: <https://sites.google.com/view/sources-big-bang-life/>
Which somewhat takes the shine / bloom off this for me.
Edit: didn't see any academic paper linked in the article (assume they're still working on it all) but the following is mentioned
> In a preliminary analysis of some of the dust, Lauretta said scientists hit the jackpot with a sample that is nearly 5 percent carbon by mass and has abundant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals.
In astrobiology (and I think also in biology and most of chemistry) it means any molecules that contain carbon, with a few exceptions (exceptions include carbon dioxide and diamond - they don't count as organic). Strange definition, perhaps, but I'm certain that's what it means in astrobiology.
Organic molecules are not necessarily in living things and, indeed, interstellar dust clouds contain huge quantities of amino acids and other organic molecules which most astronomers believe have never been near a living thing.
The best I can come up with is that organic chemistry is the study of the interactions of a set of common structural motifs (called functional groups), and an organic molecule is something that contains those functional groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity
Seems like asteroid astrophysicists like to be a bit more specific about this stuff than their stellar and galactic astrophysicist colleagues.
Happily, it's become okay for them to talk about astrobiology. It was mostly taboo until a few years ago. (Just speculating here, but I think it was the discovery of lots of exoplanets that caused astrobiology to become permissible.)
In the broadest sense, organics could refer to any molecule of carbon and hydrogen, however I don't think that's how it's used here.
> Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry
or
> In chemistry, many authors consider an organic compound to be any chemical compound that contains carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds, however, some authors consider an organic compound to be any chemical compound that contains carbon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound
The limiting factor with many fasteners – including those with the classic Phillips drive system – is the amount of torque that can be put through it. A greater torque requirement has traditionally meant either that larger fasteners have had to be used, or more of them. Either way, significant weight is added to a joint. . . . [T]he ACR Torq-Set Drive System . . . is an offset cruciform drive system that allows more torque to be applied.
https://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/content/technology/can-phil...
Torq-set bits are similar to Phillips-head bits, but the four arms of its central cross are offset from each other. This design helps to prevent tampering, and makes the screw ideal for use in aerospace applications.
https://www.grainger.com/category/tools/sockets-bits/screwdr...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_screw
On the other hand, the Roberson might be cheaper to produce and have sufficient torque for a particular application so Torq-set might be overkill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-return_mission#2000s
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37846787)
Minerals: 0.00025 Tons