Space Rock Yields Carbon Bounty

Space Rock Yields Carbon Bounty

news.bbc.co.uk

Formic acid, a molecule implicated in the origins of life, has been found at record levels on a meteorite that fell into a Canadian lake in 2000.

Cold temperatures on Tagish Lake prevented the volatile chemical from dissipating quickly.

An analysis showed four times more formic acid in the fragments than has been recorded on previous meteorites.

The researchers told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that the formic acid was extraterrestrial.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I did a search for "Tagish Lake" and didn't find anything on this latest find, and thought it was quite important.

The last line from the snippet says it all:
"The researchers told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that the formic acid was extraterrestrial."

The article went on to say:
"Formic acid is one of a group of compounds dubbed "organics", because they are rich in carbon.

"We are lucky that the meteorite was untouched by humans hands, avoiding contamination by organic compounds that we have on our fingers," said Dr Christopher Herd, the curator of the University of Alberta's meteorite collection."

It has long been said that finding carbon out there somewhere would be the best evidence for other habitable planters. Well there it is.

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Carbon eh?

We should not forget the teachings of the wise one Al Gore, this rock and its carbon should be immediately launched back into space before it can cause runaway global warming/climate change.



Carbon is BAD!

Where iron comes from for the space rocks
Star fission up to iron, then the Star explodes taking the lower
elements and combinations with the large chunks of iron to make
planets like Earth.

Where carbon comes from.
Carbon already formed when iron come along.

The both have been together until the star explodes.
Thats how Earth got its iron core and carbon and all the rest
above iron on the periodic chart or star chart or earth chart
or cosmic rock chart.

A lot of carbon and its element combinations helped make the Earth
live but there is no life on a space rock.

I came across this fascinating but short video recently posted by the Royal Ontario Museum which is all about the Tagish Lake meteorite, and thought it was worth posting here.