Meteorite may hold clues to life

I was very intrigued when I learned about the French Meteorite Oreguil which landed in the 1800's and was said to have organic materials in it. This was in the 1960s and might meteorite and meteor interests soared.Since that I have observed countless meteor showers, fireballs, some bolides (fireballs with meteoric booms). Then lately I started collecting more meteorites but this Tagish one that I heard about in 2003 and now have a small piece is the exception in many ways.


The Tagish Meteorite exploded in Canada and reigned down very old caronaceous chondrites meteorites on the Canadian Yukon.It was most interesting that no one really hunted for the meteorites until later but finally they were found on the ice of the Tagish Lake and around the lake.

Lately there is now much more about these pristine meteorites


Meteorite may hold clues to life

“This may be the cleanest meteorite we have.
The meteor opens a window into the kind of material from which the solar system was formed.
The meteorite is unusually rich in carbon molecules that have formed into hollow bubbles so tiny that a trillion of them would weigh less than a grape.
That’s important for two reasons: all living things are built from carbon compounds and all living things need to arrange those compounds into membranes that protect what’s inside the organism from what’s outside."
“Astrobiologists consider forming a membrane to be one of the most important and difficult steps in forming the first cells,” said Messenger.
“These globules are premade membrane structures. They may have nothing to do with life per se, but they’re organic-rich, they’re about the right size and they’re hollow.”

(nice photo of one of the bigger meteorites in this article website below)

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1164970952693&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home">http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1164970952693&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home


SCIENCE NEWS
December 01, 2006
Ancient Meteorites from Outer Solar System May Have Provided Raw Materials for Life
Meteorite that fell in Canada's Tagish Lake contains organic compounds from a time before planets formed

Finally

"We're sure that these [globules] are not alive," Messenger remarks. "But they may have been important ingredients for the first life-forms.
Like the Tagish Lake meteorite globules, comet particles are rich in carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. The NASA scientists are currently analyzing particle samples collected by the comet-chasing Stardust Mission to determine if organic globules were a common form of prebiotic organic matter present throughout the early solar system."

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=3B156AB3-E7F2-99DF-3954A06521CC6FBD>



also

http://evomech1.blogspot.com/2006/12/nasa-scientists-find-primordial.html

and



and

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/12/01/meteorite_spa.html?category=earth&guid=20061201150000