chargement...
Those who believe in extraterrestrial life must rejoice over the new discovery that marks the beginning of 2018. Twenty years after the meteorites that fell in Morocco and Texas, near a basketball court, a recent study conducted by a number of scientists reveals the «fascinating components» of the these rocks, sparking questions regarding life beyond earth. The survey, published on the 10th of January by Science Advances, is the first chemical study of organic matter «to show organic matter and water in salt crystals found in meteorites on the Earth», reports the Express.
More precisely, these meteorites, carefully hosted since 1998 by the NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas, are filled with liquid water, an important component for life, hydrocarbons and amino acids.
Although the discovery does not prove the potential existence of life outside earth, it sheds light on the fact that these meteorites «encapsulation of rich chemistry may be equated to the preservation of prehistoric insects in solidified sap droplets», said the same source.
«This is really the first time we have found abundant organic matter also associated with liquid water that is really crucial to the origin of life and the origin of complex organic compounds in space», Queenie Chan, a planetary scientist, who was the study's lead author.
«like a fly in amber»
Among the hypotheses put forward by the scientists, emerges one suggesting that «the organic matter originated from a water-rich, or previously water-rich parent body — an ocean world in the early solar system, possibly Ceres». Other organic materials could have been added by a collision with another object such as the asteroid Hebe, because these rocks traveled in space.
The microscopic traces of water found in the fragments could even go back to the birth of our solar system, 4.5 billion years ago. «It's like a fly in amber,» said David Kilcoyne from the Berkeley lab.
If this discovery does not prove that life exists outside Earth, it nevertheless confirms this possibility ...
