This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory have teamed up to get a fresh look at the complex makeup of meteorites and glimpse into our solar system's past. Powerful spectrometry found only at the MagLab identified the vast array of organic compounds inside two meteorites, and Brookhaven scientists followed up with images detailing the structure of some of those extraterrestrial molecules.
Their research suggests that the chemical foundation for life is deeply woven into the fabric of the universe and broadens our understanding of the cosmic ingredients that rained down on early Earth, potentially kickstarting life as we know it. The study was published in The Planetary Science Journal. "This can shed light on how much complex organic material is out in space," said Joseph Frye-Jones, who led the mass spectrometry research as a Florida State University graduate research assistant and is the lead author on the paper.
To conduct the research, Frye-Jones obtained fragments of the Murchison meteorite, a space rock billions of years old that fell in Australia in 1969. The piece came from Chicago's Field Museum. Frye-Jones also received a piece of the Aguas Zarcas meteorite, which fell in Costa Rica in 2019, provided by the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University.
The analysis found a staggeringly large variety of carbon-based molecules—tens of thousands—in a small sample of each meteorite. Each has the potential to represent several unique molecules, meaning the meteorites are far more chemically complex than anticipated, likely among the most complex materials ever known. "The Murchison meteorite is at least 5.5 billion years old, 1 billion years older than Earth, and this is just as complex as petroleum deposits, which are some of the most complex mixtures that we have analyzed in our lab.
These findings show just how complex the organic materials in space can be," Frye-Jones said. Even though the two meteorites belong to the same cosmic family and look similar on the surface, their chemical fingerprints are vastly different. They share only a small fraction of complex molecules.
This tells us that space is not uniform. Different asteroids experienced radically different environments as they formed, and the primordial solar system created a vast, diverse organic chemistry matrix. "It is giving us a glimpse at the origins of our planet and solar system," Frye-Jones said.
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