It's Time For Your Annual Weather Update for the Outer Solar System

A couple times a year, the Hubble Space Telescope turns its powerful gaze on the giant planets in the outer Solar System, studying their cloudtops and weather systems. With the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) Program, Hubble provides us with these views and also delivers weather reports on what’s happening. Here’s an updated report and some new images of the stormy surfaces of Jupiter and Uranus.  

According to Hubble, the forecast for Jupiter continues to be stormy, especially at low northern latitudes. In just the past decade, a prominent string of storms have formed, creating what’s called a “vortex street,” which is especially visible in the image from November 12, 2022.  This is a wave pattern of nested anticyclones and cyclones, “locked together like in a machine with alternating gears moving clockwise and counterclockwise,” according to planetary scientists. NASA says that if the storms get close enough to each other, they could merge into a storm even larger than Jupiter’s notorious Great Red Spot. These storms have only sprung up recently, as in the 1990s and early 2000s, these types of storms weren’t around. But these storms seem to be getting more active over time, and the strong color differences indicate that Hubble is seeing different cloud heights and depths as well.

The black dot on Jupiter’s western side is from the moon Io, which is visible as an orange sphere near Jupiter’s center. If you zoom in on the full-size version of this image, found here, you’ll see that Hubble’s resolution is so sharp that you can make out Io’s mottled-orange surface, which comes from the numerous active volcanoes.

In the most recent image from January 6, 2023, the Great Red Spot shows up perfectly. NASA says that although this vortex is big enough to swallow Earth, it has actually shrunk, and is now the smallest size it has ever been over observation records dating back 150 years.

Just below and to the right of the GRS, Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede can be seen.  

Why is this view of Jupiter smaller than the image from just a few months ago? Jupiter was 130,350 km (81,000 miles) farther from Earth (and Hubble) when the photo was taken.

Hubble images of Uranus from 2014, compared to 2022. Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), and Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI).

Moving on to Uranus, Hubble has been watching an extensive storm system at the north pole of this planet getting brighter each year as the planet approaches the peak of summer in its northern hemisphere. Of course, Uranus is tilted on its side, and so the north pole is can be found where the equator would be on our Solar System’s other planets.

Comparing images from 2014 to this latest image taken on November 10, 2022, this giant storm system now covers a large percentage of the planet. NASA says that at the Uranian equinox in 2007, neither pole was particularly bright. Now, planetary astronomers are trying to discern how and why this polar storm continues to grow. It might involve various atmospheric effects, from circulation, particle properties, and chemical processes, which control how the atmospheric polar cap changes with the seasons.

As northern summer solstice approaches in 2028 the cap may grow larger and brighter still, and will be aimed directly toward Earth, allowing good views of the north pole. Additionally, the ring system, clearly visible here, will then appear face-on. This will provide new and unique views of the rings.

These Hubble views of the Solar System’s gas giants complement observations from the spacecraft visiting these worlds, such as Juno, currently orbiting Jupiter. When the Cassini mission — which plunged into Saturn in 2017 — was orbiting the Saturn system, astronomers could compare the views from Hubble and Cassini, providing more insights. Additionally, planetary scientists can look back at images from the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, which collectively flew by all four giant planets between 1979 and 1989, and compare with the recent Hubble images to track changes over time of the weather on planets in the outer Solar System.

The post It's Time For Your Annual Weather Update for the Outer Solar System appeared first on Universe Today.

Europa’s Ice Rotates at a Different Speed From its Interior. Now We May Know Why

Jupiter’s moon, Europa, contains a large ocean of salty water beneath its icy shell, some of which makes it to the surface from time to time, and this vast ocean could host life, as well. Europa was most recently observed by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, but current examinations of the moon’s internal ocean are limited to computer models and simulations produced here on Earth, as no mission is actively exploring this tiny moon orbiting Jupiter. Other than the internal water occasionally breaching the icy shell and making it to the surface, what other effects could the internal ocean have on the icy shell that encloses it?

This is what an international team of researchers hope to answer as they examined the rotational relationship between Europa’s icy shell and the small moon’s interior ocean. While scientists have long suspected the free-floating properties of the ice shell, meaning it’s detached from the interior ocean, this new study is the first to present new modeling that suggests the currents of the ocean could be driving the icy shell’s rotation.

Artist illustration of Europa’s internal ocean interacting with the icy shell with Jupiter and Io in the background. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

For the study, the researchers examined the drag force exhibited between the icy shell and the ocean beneath it. In fluid mechanics, the drag force is what a solid object experiences as it moves through a surrounding fluid. In this case, the bottom of Europa’s icy shell that’s moving through the interior ocean. The study also offers hints that Europa’s surface features of countless cracks and ridges could also be the result of the icy shell stretching and compressing while it’s being dragged along by the interior ocean.

“Before this, it was known through laboratory experiments and modeling that heating and cooling of Europa’s ocean may drive currents,” said Dr. Hamish Hay, who is a researcher at the University of Oxford University but performed the research while a postdoctoral research associate at NASA JPL-Caltech, and is lead author of the study. “Now our results highlight a coupling between the ocean and the rotation of the icy shell that was never previously considered.”

Scientists have been arguing for decades over the rotational speeds between the icy shell and interior ocean, specifically pertaining to if the shell rotates faster. However, scientists have always tried to use Jupiter’s massive gravity tugging on Europa and its icy shell as the reason why the icy shell might rotate faster than the ocean, but they haven’t considered the ocean itself as being the reason, until now.

Learn about Europa, its ocean-surface interaction, and NASA’s Europa Clipper mission!

“To me, it was completely unexpected that what happens in the ocean’s circulation could be enough to affect the icy shell. That was a huge surprise,” said Dr. Robert Pappalardo, who is a Europa Clipper Project Scientist at JPL, and a co-author on the study. “And the idea that the cracks and ridges we see on Europa’s surface could be tied to the circulation of the ocean below – geologists don’t usually think, ‘Maybe it’s the ocean doing that.’”

In collaboration with the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, the researchers developed circulation models of Europa’s interior ocean using the same methods to develop models for studying the oceans of the Earth. Scientists have long hypothesized that Europa’s internal ocean is heated from the bottom from a combination of radioactive decay and tidal heating, and created simulations to determine how this could affect the ocean circulation.

The research team discovered that while the ocean circulation appeared to start off with vertical motion—north-south and south-north—from the bottom of the ocean, Europa’s rotation caused these currents to eventually veer horizontally—east-west and west-east. When the researchers incorporated the drag force into their models, they discovered that with enough speed the ocean currents could alter the rotation speed of the icy shell above over time, making it move either faster or slower. In the end, the researchers determined that as the internal ocean circulation changes over time, so does the rotation speed of the icy shell.

Artist’s in-depth illustration of Europa’s internal ocean, plus external forces, interacting with the moon’s surface. (Credit: NASA)

“The work could be important in understanding how other ocean worlds’ rotation speeds may have changed over time,” said Dr. Hay. “And now that we know about the potential coupling of interior oceans with the surfaces of these bodies, we may learn more about their geological histories as well as Europa’s.”

A vital piece to learning more about Europa and its internal ocean is NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in 2024 and arrive at Jupiter in 2030. While the primary science objective of Europa Clipper will be to determine the potential habitability of Europa, specifically pertaining to its internal ocean, this mission could also offer an enormous opportunity to learn more about how the internal ocean affects the icy shell and the rotational behavior of them both. In preparation for the missions, scientists at NASA JPL are currently using a simulation chamber called “The Ark” to learn more about Europa before Clipper gets there.

What new insights will scientists learn about Europa’s internal ocean and its effects on the moon’s icy shell in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Europa’s Ice Rotates at a Different Speed From its Interior. Now We May Know Why appeared first on Universe Today.

Type One Energy Raises $29M to Work on a Crazy Fusion Device

A Wisconsin-based startup called Type One Energy says it’s closed an over-subscribed $29 million financing round to launch its effort to commercialize a weird kind of nuclear fusion device known as a stellarator.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the $2 billion clean-energy fund created by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, partnered with TDK Ventures and Doral Energy Tech Ventures to co-lead the investment round. Other backers include Darco, the Grantham Foundation, MILFAM, Orbia Ventures, Shorewind Capital, TRIREC and Vahoca.

Stellarator fusion devices rely on a pretzel-shaped torus of magnets to contain the plasma where fusion takes place. They have a design that’s strikingly different from, say, the giant tokamak that’s being built for the multibillion-dollar ITER experimental fusion reactor in France, or the laser-blasting device at the National Ignition Facility in California that recently hit an energy-producing milestone. Some have gone so far as to call stellarators the “fusion reactor designed in hell.”

The twisted structure of a stellarator device is meant to create a stable magnetic field for plasma containment without having to use massive circulating electric currents. Plasma physics labs have been building stellarators since the 1950s. The billion-dollar Wendelstein 7-X reactor — which began operation in Germany in 2015 — is currently the world’s largest experimental fusion device of the stellarator type.

In parallel with experiments such as ITER and Wendelstein 7-X, commercial ventures are pursuing the dream of harnessing nuclear fusion — the phenomenon that powers the sun in accordance with Albert Einstein’s famous E=mc² equation. Fusion is touted as a relatively clean, carbon-free source of energy, potentially fueled by deuterium extracted from the world’s oceans or helium-3 mined on the moon. But it’s been devilishly difficult to develop a workable fusion power plant.

Plans for commercial fusion typically call for smashing atoms or ions together under pressures and temperatures high enough to transform a smidgen of mass directly into energy. Fusion Energy Base’s litany of companies runs from Agni to Zap — and includes Commonwealth Fusion Systems, another startup in Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ portfolio. But Type One Energy is one of only two stellarator-centric companies on the list. (The other is Renaissance Fusion.)

Carmichael Roberts, who co-leads Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ investment committee, said it’s worth making a multimillion-dollar bet on stellarator technology.

“Fusion is the ultimate energy source, and its successful commercialization will be a huge leap towards achieving clean and abundant energy for everyone,” Roberts said in a news release. “Advances in stellarator science, including Type One Energy’s ability to execute a stellarator development project, provide the basis for a very exciting and promising path to practical fusion on the grid in the coming decades.”

In conjunction with the infusion of capital, Christofer Mowry will take over as Type One Energy’s CEO. Mowry is Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ senior adviser on fusion, and previously served as CEO of Vancouver, B.C.-based General Fusion. He said Type One “represents a special opportunity.”

“This team’s knowledge and credibility gives Type One the unique ability to effectively integraete recent global advances in stellarator-relevant technology and to deliver a fusion power plant without another costly, large-scale science validation machine,” Mowry said.

The newly announced funding brings Type One’s total investment since its founding in 2019 to $30.7 million. Type One said the added support will fuel rapid expansion of the company, which currently has fewer than 10 full-time employees.

The company’s partners include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. “We look forward to collaborating with Type One Energy to realize the advantags of HTS high-field fusion magnets to their stellarator technology,” said Dennis Whyte, the center’s director.

Type One and its scientific collaborators @MIT-PSFC, @UWMadison & @CFS_energy built the world’s first high-temp superconducting cable for stellarator magnets. The new design stayed superconducting despite the complex geometry. A complete HTS stellarator magnet is now being built. pic.twitter.com/TWpGYEPQwh

— Type One Energy (@typeoneenergy) June 28, 2021

Type One hasn’t specified a target date for commercialization, other than to say that its FusionDirect timeline for developing a viable Fusion Power Plant, or FPP, will unfold over the coming decade.

“The company will build a relatively low-cost but high-performance stellarator Risk Reduction Platform over the next several years,” Type One said in an emailed statement. “The RRP testbed will be used to validate several FFP engineering design choices and confirm the fidelity of its stellarator plasma physics models and simulations. The RRP testbed will support the ongoing primary mission to design and develop the FPP, which has already begun.”

It goes without saying that it’ll take more than $29 million to get a commercial fusion power plant up and running — but the newly announced funding should take Type One well beyond square one.

The post Type One Energy Raises $29M to Work on a Crazy Fusion Device appeared first on Universe Today.

Beads of Lunar Glass Boost Hopes for Using the Moon’s Water

Beads of glass could become a key source of water for future crewed settlements on the moon, researchers say.

That claim is based on an assessment of the water contained within a sampling of glassy beads that were created over the course of millennia by cosmic impacts on the moon, and ended up being brought back to Earth in 2020 by China’s Chang’e-5 sample return mission.

A spectroscopic analysis determined that the beads contained more water than the researchers expected based on past studies. They surmised that interactions between hydrogen ions in the solar wind and oxygen-bearing materials in lunar soil created H₂O molecules that could be trapped within the glass — and then diffused under the right conditions.

Based on an extrapolation of such findings, the research team — headed by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences — estimates that glass beads in lunar soil may contain up to 270 trillion kilograms (595 trillion pounds, or 71 trillion gallons) of water.

“We propose that impact glass beads in lunar soils are a prime water reservoir candidate able to drive the lunar surface water cycle,” the researchers report in Nature Geoscience.

Scientists have known for decades that the moon harbors reservoirs of water in the form of ice, concentrated at the poles. That sort of water is thought to have arrived in the form of cometary impacts, with water molecules migrating to permanently shadowed craters in the lunar polar regions.

Water was even detected in glass bead samples that were brought back to Earth by NASA’s Apollo lunar missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s — but the water detected in the Chang’e-5 samples was three times as abundant on average. And based on studies of basaltic glass beads on Earth, the researchers say it’s theoretically possible for the abundances to be even greater.

“This could be the result of dynamic diffusion and release of water in the impact glass beads controlled by the time-of-day temperature oscillations,” they write. “The dynamic ingress and egress of water in impact glass beads could have acted as a buffer to explain the global and daily variations of water abundance on the lunar surface and in the lunar exosphere.”

Researchers propose a three-stage process for sustaining a lunar water cycle with impact glass beads: (A) The beads are created when a meteoroid impact melts silica-bearing materials on the moon’s surface. (B) The solar wind brings hydrogen ions to the surface, and interactions with oxygen-bearing materials produce water molecules that are trapped within the beads. (C) The beads sink deeper into the lunar soil, creating a reservoir for water. Irradiation or further meteoroid impacts can cause release of the water. (Credit: He et al. / Nature Geoscience)

If enough of the beads could be collected, and if engineers can come up with an efficient way to heat up the beads and extract the H₂O, that could give future lunar explorers a source of water for drinking, oxygen for breathing, and hydrogen for rocket fuel. Those are a couple of big “ifs,” but the research team says the problems seem solvable.

“These findings indicate that the lunar soils contain a much higher amount of solar wind-derived water than previously thought, which could be a water reservoir for in situ utilization in future lunar exploration,” they say in their study. “Indeed, this water entrapped in impact glass beads appears to be quite easy to extract.”

Astronauts could investigate the possibilities further as part of NASA’s Artemis program, which is due to send the first crewed mission since the Apollo era to the lunar surface in the mid-2020s. And if the newly reported findings hold up, they could also apply to the exploration of other worlds where water has been detected, such as Mercury and Vesta.

“Our findings indicate that the impact glasses on the surface of solar system airless bodies are capable of storing solar wind-derived water and releasing it to space,” the researchers behind the new study say.

Huicun He of the Chinese Academy of Science’s Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics is the lead author of the study in Nature Geoscience, titled “A Solar Wind-Derived Water Reservoir on the Moon Hosted by Impact Glass Beads.” Twenty-seven other researchers are listed as co-authors.

The post Beads of Lunar Glass Boost Hopes for Using the Moon’s Water appeared first on Universe Today.

Finally, JWST's Data on the First TRAPPIST-1 Planet. Survey Says? It Sucks

With the James Webb Space Telescope’s ability to detect and study the atmospheres of distant planets orbiting other stars, exoplanet enthusiasts have been anticipating JWST’s first data on some of the worlds in the famous TRAPPIST-1 system. This is the system where seven Earth-sized worlds are orbiting a red dwarf star, with several in the habitable zone.

Today, a new study was released on the innermost planet in the system, TRAPPIST-1 b. The authors of the study were quite frank: this world very likely has no atmosphere at all. Additionally, the conditions there for possible life as we know it only get worse from there.

This world orbits so close to the star that it receives four times as much irradiation as the Earth receives from the Sun. Its dayside temperatures reach 500 kelvin, (roughly 230°C, or 450°F), which on the upside is the perfect temperature to bake a pizza.

All planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system have been observed previously with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, and so far, no atmospheric features have been detected. But still, astronomers haven’t been able to rule out the possibility. With JWST’s infrared capabilities, it has the power to detect ‘heavy’ molecules such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and methane, and so has the potential to determine whether or not the TRAPPIST-1 planets have atmospheres, and if so, what they are made of.

“These observations really take advantage of Webb’s mid-infrared capability,” said Thomas Greene, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and lead author on the study published in the journal Nature. “No previous telescopes have had the sensitivity to measure such dim mid-infrared light.”

Light curve showing the change in brightness of the TRAPPIST-1 system as the innermost planet, TRAPPIST-1 b, moves behind the star. This phenomenon is known as a secondary eclipse. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI), T. P. Greene (NASA Ames), T. Bell (BAERI), E. Ducrot (CEA), P. Lagage (CEA)

TRAPPIST-1 b, the innermost planet, has an orbital distance about one hundredth that of Earth’s, and so is not within the system’s habitable zone. Nor was it ever expected to have an atmosphere, due to the hellish conditions.

So, it wasn’t a surprise that they found virtually no detectable atmospheric absorption from carbon dioxide or other species. This is probably because TRAPPIST-1b absorbs nearly all the irradiation from the red dwarf star and does not have a high-pressure atmosphere.

But still, there was one more way to look for any traces of atmosphere, which is to measure the planet’s temperature.

Greene and colleagues used the JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which can observe mid-to-long wavelength radiation, to assess the thermal emission of TRAPPIST-1b. According to their paper, they detected the planet’s secondary eclipse, which is when TRAPPIST-1b passes behind its star and were able to measure the planet’s dayside temperature. They explained:

“When the planet is beside the star, the light emitted by both the star and the dayside of the planet reach the telescope, and the system appears brighter. When the planet is behind the star, the light emitted by the planet is blocked and only the starlight reaches the telescope, causing the apparent brightness to decrease. Astronomers can subtract the brightness of the star from the combined brightness of the star and planet to calculate how much infrared light is coming from the planet’s dayside. This is then used to calculate the dayside temperature.”

Comparison of the dayside temperature of TRAPPIST-1 b as measured using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to computer models showing what the temperature would be under various conditions. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI), T. P. Greene (NASA Ames), T. Bell (BAERI), E. Ducrot (CEA), P. Lagage (CEA)

This type of observation was in itself a major milestone, the team said. With the star more than 1,000 times brighter than the planet, the change in brightness is less than 0.1%.

“There was also some fear that we’d miss the eclipse. The planets all tug on each other, so the orbits are not perfect,” said Taylor Bell, a post-doctoral researcher at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute who analyzed the data, quoted in a press release. “But it was just amazing: The time of the eclipse that we saw in the data matched the predicted time within a couple of minutes.”

The team said they hope to make more observations of TRAPPIST 1b, as they’d like to know more about the heat redistribution of the planet. Additionally, this observation can help inform future observations of the other TRAPPIST-1 planets –as well as the properties of other red dwarf planets — and how they differ from those in our own Solar System.

So, stay tuned for JWST data on the next world in the system; it looks like we’re going to get them one at a time.

The post Finally, JWST's Data on the First TRAPPIST-1 Planet. Survey Says? It Sucks appeared first on Universe Today.

Why Does ‘Oumuamua Follow Such a Bizarre Orbit? Hydrogen Outgassing

Nothing excites space enthusiasts like a good alien mystery. The interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua presented one as it moved through the inner solar system in 2017. At least one scientist has insisted that this pancake-shaped object is an alien spacecraft. That’s because of the way it accelerated away from the Sun as it passed through. However, a number of planetary scientists say its activity might be more comet-like—something fairly common in the solar system.

Certainly, a lot of theories floated around about which natural events could cause ‘Oumuamua to accelerate away. At least one of them invokes nitrogen outgassing, although that theory has some problems. It could be more like icy Pluto. Or, maybe it’s some kind of interstellar “dust bunny” made of materials stuck together in a weird shape.

A new study by a pair of astronomers solves at least part of the mystery by using chemistry. They suggest that hydrogen gas (H₂) got formed and trapped in ‘Oumuamua thanks to millions of years of cosmic radiation. Once it experienced even a little heat from the Sun, the hydrogen gas was released. That provided a sort of “jet engine effect”, giving the object a surprising amount of acceleration as it left.

Hyperbolic trajectory of ?Oumuamua through the inner Solar System, with the Sun at the focus, showing its position every 7 days. The planet positions are fixed at the perihelion on September 9, 2017. Shown from a three-quarter perspective, roughly aligned to the plane of ?Oumuamua’s path. Credit: Tomruen, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Explaining Oumuamua’s Outgassing and Acceleration

University of California Berkeley astrochemist Jennifer Bergner came up with the outgassing explanation and brought it to the attention of colleague Darryl Seligman, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. Bergner studies chemical reactions that happen on icy rocks in the vacuum of space. “A comet traveling through the interstellar medium basically is getting cooked by cosmic radiation, forming hydrogen as a result,” Bergner said. “Our thought was: if this was happening, could you actually trap it in the body so that when it entered the solar system and it was warmed up, it would outgas that hydrogen? Could that quantitatively produce the force that you need to explain the non-gravitational acceleration?”

Bergner and Seligman studied the idea further and found a clue in decades-old research about ice behavior in space. When high-energy particles (like cosmic rays) hit an icy body, the process produces and traps molecular hydrogen (H₂) inside. Cosmic rays (which travel at nearly the speed of light) can penetrate quite deeply into ice. That could convert a quarter (or more) of an icy body’s water to hydrogen gas.

Traveling through space, a comet with a lot of H₂ hidden away would remain that way indefinitely. But, as we know from studying comets, solar radiation affects icy objects. Once a comet nucleus approaches the inner solar system, that radiation causes volatiles to vaporize. Thar creates a stream of gas and dust that creates the coma, dust, and plasma tails.

Did This Happen to ‘Oumuamua?

Bergner explained how subsequent outgassing of H₂ could have happened to this little body. Astronomers estimate it’s about 115 by 111 by 19 meters in size. “For a comet several kilometers across, the outgassing would be from a really thin shell relative to the bulk of the object, so both compositionally and in terms of any acceleration, you wouldn’t necessarily expect that to be a detectable effect,” she said. “But because ‘Oumuamua was so small, we think that it actually produced sufficient force to power this acceleration.”

If it’s a comet from another star system, that gives scientists new insights into conditions elsewhere in our galaxy. We know comets are the icy leftovers of star and planet formation. This makes them a great way to probe the conditions in the solar nebula 4.5 billion years ago. If the same formation activities happened elsewhere and created ‘Oumuamua. then it’s a treasury of information about its home system.

“What’s beautiful about Jenny’s idea is that it’s exactly what should happen to interstellar comets. We had all these stupid ideas, like hydrogen icebergs and other crazy things, and it’s just the most generic explanation,” Seligman said. “The comets and asteroids in the solar system have arguably taught us more about planet formation than what we’ve learned from the actual planets in the solar system,” Seligman said. “I think that the interstellar comets could arguably tell us more about extrasolar planets than the extrasolar planets we are trying to get measurements of today.”

If this holds true for ‘Oumuamua, then it solves the essential mystery of this alien object. And, it’s actually more exciting than aliens. It gives an interesting look at star and planet formation in other places in the Galaxy.

For More Information

Surprisingly simple explanation for alien comet ‘Oumuamua’s weird orbit
Acceleration of 1I/‘Oumuamua from radiolytically produced H2 in H2O ice

The post Why Does ‘Oumuamua Follow Such a Bizarre Orbit? Hydrogen Outgassing appeared first on Universe Today.

Asteroid Ryugu Contains Niacin (aka Vitamin B3)

In December 2020, JAXA’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft delivered a pristine sample of otherworldly dust and rock from asteroid Ryugu to Earth. Scientists have since had the opportunity to study the sample, and announced last week that the asteroid contains organic molecules important for life. In particular, they discovered Niacin, otherwise known as vitamin B3, and Uracil, one of the four core components of ribonucleic acid (RNA).

Niacin, which is found in our diets via nuts, seeds, legumes, and meats, helps human bodies build fat and create energy from the nutrients we eat. It also plays a role in repairing DNA.

Uracil, as one of the building blocks of RNA, plays an important function in our bodies too. It carries instructions from DNA, which is contained inside the nucleus of our cells, to the cells’ ribosome, where proteins are made.

Optical microscopic images of bulk samples from Hayabusa2 (from Yada et al. 2021, Wikimedia Commons).

Similar molecules have been discovered in extraterrestrial objects before, but the pristine condition of Hayabusa2’s sample makes the evidence much more compelling.

“Scientists have previously found nucleobases and vitamins in certain carbon-rich meteorites, but there was always the question of contamination by exposure to the Earth’s environment,” said Yasuhiro Oba, Associate Professor at Hokkaido University, who led the study.

“Since the Hayabusa2 spacecraft collected two samples directly from asteroid Ryugu and delivered them to Earth in sealed capsules, contamination can be ruled out,” he explained.

Hayabusa2’s sampling technique involved flying the spacecraft low to the asteroid’s surface, then firing a projectile at the asteroid, throwing up dust and rock in a debris cloud that could be caught by the spacecraft’s open sampling container. Two samples were taken: one from the surface soil, and another from deeper within the asteroid. To obtain the deep sample, the spacecraft fire a larger projectile at Ryugu to form a crater, and then took a sample from the crater floor.

Asteroid Ryugu as seen by Hayabusa2 in 2018. (JAXA Hayabusa 2, Meli thev, Wikimedia Commons).

Uracil was found in both the surface and subsurface samples, though it was more prevalent in the subsurface. In other words, ultraviolet photons and cosmic rays may have caused the Uracil on the asteroid’s surface to begin to decay.

“Organic molecules in the surface materials would have experienced energetic processes more extensively than those in the subsurface materials, which potentially causes preferential degradation of molecules at the surface,” the researchers wrote.

Other organic molecules discovered in the samples include amino acids, amines, and carboxylic acids.

The researchers compared the Ryugu samples with previously studied meteorites – especially the Orgueil meteorite, which fell to Earth in southern France in 1864. The similarities are striking, though they are not identical, and suggest that the meteorite came from a similar C-type asteroid.

Studies of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites like the Orgueil sample, and of asteroids like Ryugu, are helping piece together how the building blocks of life ended up on Earth in the first place. Vitamin B3, Uracil, and other organic molecules are present elsewhere in the Solar System, and have been for a long time. This new research suggests we probably have asteroids like Ryugu to thank for these life-giving compounds here at home.

Learn More:

Yasuhiro Obo et al. “Uracil in the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu,” Nature Communications.

“Uracil found in Ryugu samples.” Hokkaido University.

Feature Image: A conceptual image for sampling materials on the asteroid Ryugu containing uracil and niacin by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft (NASA Goddard/JAXA/Dan Gallagher).

The post Asteroid Ryugu Contains Niacin (aka Vitamin B3) appeared first on Universe Today.