Friday, December 1, 2006

If all goes well, research rocket invention will pierce tornado

Storm chaser Brian Waldrop

Wednesday, 11/29/06 Storm chaser aims for twister's heart
If all goes well, research rocket invention will pierce tornado

By MITCHELL KLINE
Staff Writer
http://www.fairviewobserver.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061129/NEWS01/611290422/1321/MTCN06

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

Saturn's Moon Iapetus shows bulding Waistline

Saturn and the moons are always showing new finds

Saturn's Moon Iapetus shows bulding Waistline



http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=714&flash=1

Meteorite's Organic Matter Older Than the Sun, Study Says

Meteorite's Organic Matter Older Than the Sun, Study Says
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
November 30, 2006

But the microscopic organic globules that make up about one-tenth of one percent of the object appear to be far older.
In a study appearing in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science, Messenger and colleagues report that isotopic anomalies in the globules suggest that they formed in very cold conditions—near absolute zero.
"What's really striking about this is that these globules clearly could not possibly have formed where [the meteorite] itself formed," Messenger said.
"Under those extreme conditions the air that you'd breathe would be solid ice. You would never find those conditions in the asteroid belt or anywhere close to the sun."

"It's the lowest density meteorite that's ever been studied," said Peter Brown, a meteor expert and professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.


"We mean that the material in the meteorite has been processed the least since it was formed. The material we see today is arguably the most representative of the material that first went into making up the solar system."
The meteorite likely formed in the outer reaches of the asteroid belt, but the organic material it contains probably had a far more distant origin.

more
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061130-meteorite.html

even more
Building Blocks of Life Found in Two Meteorites
Bijal P. Trivedi
National Geographic Today
December 19, 2001


The sugar and sugar-like molecules, collectively called polyols, were found in the Murchison meteorite that fell in Murchison, Australia, in 1969 and the Murray meteor that fell in Kentucky in 1950—two meteorites that are rich in carbon.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1219_TVsugarmeteors.html