According to Kyodo News, Japan Kyodo News reported on September 23, a Japanese scientific research team detected carbonated water in the sand sample of the asteroid "Ryugu". This is the first time that the existence of liquid water has been confirmed since the Hayabusa 2 probe brought back to Earth in 2020.
There is carbonated water inside the black hole
However, it is exciting to see that in June, the scientific research team also found that the sample actually contained more than 20 amino acids . Combined with the fact that liquid water is now discovered, it undoubtedly enhanced the possibility that "water and life on the earth are originated in outer space."
"Dragon Palace" surface sample more than 300 million kilometers away from the earth
Where does the water on the earth come from?
About 71% of the earth's surface is covered by the ocean. Calculated by the average ocean depth of 3,700 meters, the amount of water on the surface is at least 1.3 billion cubic kilometers. How did so much water appear?
scientific community has two views on this. One is that when the earth was formed, it contained sufficient water itself, because according to the theory of solar system formation, when the nebula begins to collapse, most of the mass gathers in the center, and the surroundings are mainly dust, and the main components of dust are water and rocky matter.
Later, these dust began to gather under the action of gravity, forming most celestial bodies in the solar system. For example, the rocky planet on Earth will naturally carry a large amount of water at the beginning of its formation. Later, under geological movement, these water will be gradually released.
. In the second view, many scientists believe that most of the water on the surface comes from outer space because they believe that the earth itself does not contain that much water, and more water is brought about by small celestial bodies such as comet .
Where does the origin of life on Earth origin?
In fact, in addition to thinking that water may be caused by an asteroid impact on the earth, the scientific community also believes that life on Earth is also brought from asteroids. What's going on?
I don’t know if you still remember the “Miller-Yuri Experiment” mentioned in the middle school textbook.
In the 1950s, American scientists Harold Yuri and Stanley Miller designed an experiment: they placed methane , hydrogen , ammonia and other substances in a closed water container, and were discharged continuously to simulate the early atmospheric environment of the earth. In the end, they accidentally discovered amino acids in the liquid at the bottom of the container.
And we know that amino acids are the basic constituent units of protein , so scientists guess that this is how life on Earth might come about. This is the so-called chemical origin theory (but humans have not yet created living organisms in the laboratory).
In addition, scientists later found amino acids in meteorite . The most famous one is the Murchison meteorite discovered in Australia in 1969 (7 billion years old, older than the solar system). Hundreds of amino acids have been found in it so far. Some friends may say that amino acids are not DNA. It would be really interesting if DNA is discovered directly.
Murchison Meteorite
What to say is what to do? In April this year, a Japanese scientific research team published a paper in Nature Communications, introducing that they discovered five types of all base contained in DNA and RNA (this is a more basic unit than DNA).
What is this concept? Simply put, the basic units of DNA and RNA are called deoxyribonucleotides and ribonucleotides (the nucleic acids we often call, essentially these nucleotides )
and these nucleotides are composed of three substances: base, five-carbon sugar and phosphoric acid . There are two key parts that determine these nucleotide types. One is five-carbon sugar, and one less oxygen atom is deoxyriboose , many of which are riboose , and the other is base, with a total of five types, namely adenine (A), guanine (G), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and uracil (U).
, and the replication of DNA and RNA, transcription of , and translation must follow the principle of base complementary pairing. With these, the final protein can appear.
Summary
Finally we found that in this asteroid called "Dragon Palace", we not only found amino acids, but now we found liquid water, as if telling us: the water and life on the earth come from outer space! Of course, nothing is absolutely true, but at least it also enhances this possibility.
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