Rosetta Probe Discovers Organic Molecules on Comet

http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-12176/#/gallery/17219

by ohaal • 12 years ago

359 117 12 years ago

dlr.de

dz0ny• 12 years ago

Source: http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151...

trose3• 12 years ago

Thank you! It should be HN policy to not post paywall sites IMO

davidw2• 12 years ago

We post links to products that cost money, though, no? Journalists need to eat too. Usually it takes entire milliseconds for someone to post other links, anyway. Or you can always sneak around the paywall.

In this case I don't mind an article that has a bit more science bias rather than 'mainstream', so the DLR link is nice.

ryanthejuggler• 12 years ago

As a convention, there ought to be a [paywall] tag appended to the title in these cases. IIRC HN already uses [video] and [PDF].

dang2• 12 years ago

Thanks; changed.

ihnorton2• 12 years ago

The underlying data here comes from the Ptolemy instrument, a gas chromatograph mass-spectrometer (ion trap, in this case) which can measure ratios of molecules in a range of 14 to 140 Da. (It might also be able to identify somewhat larger species by inducing fragmentation and measuring the resulting pattern of smaller molecules within the effective mass range, but I haven't found if this capability was included).

Some more info here: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1937.pdf

and: http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/31445-instruments/?fbodylongid=89...

The instrument has its own Twitter feed, of course: https://twitter.com/philae_ptolemy

happyscrappy• 12 years ago

Apparently the data is from COSAC not Ptolemy. The drill deployed but did not get a sample.

https://twitter.com/erichand/status/534413817040867328

Edit: Changed Rosetta to COSAC.

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

The article very clearly indicates the data is from COSAC, an instrument on the lander. It also indicates that the sampling came from the "atmosphere" of the comet rather than drilling.

christiangenco• 12 years ago

Oh interesting:

Once the rechargeable secondary battery has been warmed by sunlight again, Philae will restart and the DLR LCC team will take their places at the control consoles again.

This is the first I've heard that Philae can wake back up. I was under the impression that it had no solar capabilities whatsoever, and that the battery was the only power it had available.

trose3• 12 years ago

Yeah the probe is covered in panels. The main issue is that it did not land where they intended and it is mostly in shadow. I am not a rocket scientist but... it looks like it will be getting closer to the sun as time goes on here so maybe the light it can get later will be more intense and enough to power it?

Khao• 12 years ago

The main issue I read was that even though it gets some light (something like 1 hour of light per 12 hours) the battery can't recharge when it's cold. So Philae needs light to heat up the battery and only then it can start charging it so it needs a longer exposure to sunlight or it needs to be closer to the sun so it heats up faster.

RobotCaleb• 12 years ago

From the panorama they released, it's in quite a hairy spot.

Mattias Malmer corrected the perspective [0] and I threw it in my JS pano viewer. [1] It helps to visualize where it's sitting.

[0] http://mattias.malmer.nu/2014/11/philae-final-landing-place/ [1] http://robotrising.org/StratoSphere/index.html?src=images/ph...

dekhn3• 12 years ago

Agreed-- I haven't seen anywhere else in the news that the probe rotated it primary panel into direct sunlight.

codeulike5• 12 years ago

They rotated it slightly just before the main battery ran out. They hope it might get enough light as the 'season' on the comet changes (perhaps around christmas) but no-one knows for sure.

yason• 12 years ago

I've understood it has solar panels. But what would be the reason they didn't put a nuclear battery on board? That would work for years.

If the direct output power of the nuclear battery was too low, it could still be used to charge the rechargeable battery until it can make the lander do work again for a few hours/days.

skywhopper• 12 years ago

Nuclear batteries are 1) heavier, 2) more expensive, 3) politically complicated.

jsmthrowaway• 12 years ago

That was asked during the early hours of the power "uh oh" phase, and someone involved replied that Europe has no ability to manufacture RTGs for political reasons.

I can't link the source but it was a tweet.

oceanstone• 12 years ago

what would be the reason they didn't put a nuclear battery on board

Not every launch makes it to space.

sondr3• 12 years ago

I also heard from reddit that they didn't want to have radiation contaminate the area where Philea landed, apparently it's a bit hard to keep all of it inside of the lander.

mkriss• 12 years ago

You can access Wallstreet journal articles by searching title in google ( because if referal is from google then article is free )

gtirloni• 12 years ago

Google redirect without paywall: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

ElHacker• 12 years ago

Thanks!

piyush_soni• 12 years ago

Thanks. Just a note to others, if you have already opened the link 'with' the paywall, even this might not work. Just open this link in another browser.

delucain• 12 years ago

Chrome's incognito mode is a good solution for this too.

coldcode• 12 years ago

Tried it in another browser, doesn't work either.

aftabh• 12 years ago

Interesting. I'm able to read the article with Google Chrome but not Firefox (which I used first) browser.

Edit: I opened the article in private mode in both Google Chrome and Firefox browsers so it cannot be related to browser's cache.

Tried other news articles from WSJ website, got the same result i.e. they worked with Google Chrome but not with Firefox browser.

grecy• 12 years ago

We hearing that hopefully when it warms up and gets closer to the sun it will wake up and start transmitting again.

Do they have an estimate of when it will be destroyed because it's too close to the sun?

jnevill• 12 years ago

The closest it gets to the sun is still outside the Earth's orbit (http://www.livecometdata.com/comets/67p-churyumov-gerasimenk...)

codeulike5• 12 years ago

comets go round the sun, not into it

codingbeer• 12 years ago

Correct, but perihelion might be too close for comfort.

privong2• 12 years ago

comets go round the sun, not into it

But that does not mean all comets survive their close approach to the Sun. Some, such as the sungrazing comets[0], come quite close to the surface and can be destroyed by their encounters with the Sun.

As jnevill points out, this particular comet's orbit does not take it closer to the Sun than the Earth's distance from the Sun. The comet is on a ~6yr orbit, I believe, and so should survive for a long period of time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sungrazing_comet

ealloc• 12 years ago

Personally I think the idea that life/prebiotic soup came to earth on a comet is suspect, for the reasons explained in these blog posts and the links therein:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2011/11/nasa-confusion-about-ori...

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/can-watery-asteroids-ex...

Two problems with the 'organic asteroid' theory are the 'racemization problem' (how to explain why life only uses L isomers rather than both the L and D isomers present in meteorites), and the fact that the amount of organic matter in meteors is tiny. Compare that to the opportunities for life to arise on earth in its diverse chemical environments.

See the calculations by Jeffrey Bada discussed in the second link.

nitrogen• 12 years ago

It's possible that there's no reason life chose L or D isomers, but choosing one and sticking to it was advantageous (I use the word "choose" loosely here).

bduerst9• 12 years ago

Abiogenesis is one of those things where there is way more speculation than evidence. Some speculation says that it is because the molecular machinery maintenance to handle both would be twice as taxing for organisms.

Of course, having the reverse isomer molecules would be advantageous against predators (who couldn't digest it) and a boon to natural selection.

Like I said, plenty of speculation to be had.

olefoo• 12 years ago

It could be a 'frozen accident', where either one works but once a positive feedback loop starts one version crowds out the other.

madaxe_again• 12 years ago

Asimov wrote a great essay on this - see A5 in this. http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/asimov-electron.p...

pjungwir• 12 years ago

I confess ignorance about this theory, but I see it a lot and I don't understand. It just seems bizarre to think that life began on a comet. Sure, we want to know the origin of life. What does pushing it off the Earth solve? I guess my question is, What are the positive reasons for thinking life arrived from a comet? I can't think of any. As a layman, the theory is so strange I'm not even sure why it needs to be refuted. Can someone explain why this idea is popular?

eru5• 12 years ago

One reason for its appeal is that the earliest fossils / signs we have of life on earth are pretty close to the ground not longer being molten lava. An origin of life in comets would give more time.

gizmo686• 12 years ago

I see it more along the lines of being a hypothesis. We do not have nearly enough evidence to put it off the table, even though it is not the most likely explanation.

ludoo• 12 years ago

"according to the German agency" I was under the impression it's a European agency...

Someone• 12 years ago

The "Lander Control Center" is German (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Aerospace_Center#Curre...)

nkuttler• 12 years ago

The probe is controlled from Germany... but yeah, that statement is as vague as it gets.

lispm• 12 years ago

http://www.dlr.de/rb/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-4539/

tormeh• 12 years ago

Yes, but the DLR is not. ESA isn't monolithic in the way that NASA is, I believe.

oelmekki• 12 years ago

Yeah, my first reaction was the same, mentioning them in the top of article while mentioning all other contributors as a note in last paragraph felt like wanting to take all credit.

But then I saw it was published on a ".de" website. You can expect it's targeted at a german audience, who naturally feels interested in knowing which part their country played into this (mentioning others just after wouldn't have hurt, though).

codeulike5• 12 years ago

Organic meaning, in this case, organic chemistry, i.e. stuff containing carbon. Perhaps hydrocarbons. But it doesn't mean 'life'.

irollboozers2• 12 years ago

The fact that exciting scientific discoveries like this are being presented on WSJ behind a paywall is absurd. Science on the internet is going to be dramatically different in 10 years than it is right now...

jonnathanson3• 12 years ago

It's inconvenient for us, but I wouldn't necessarily call it "absurd." The Wall Street Journal is not a 501(c). It's either this, or a flurry of intrusive ads. (Or a subscription upsell, but I digress). Different publications pick their poison differently. But someone's gotta pay for something.

Besides, paywalls aren't hard to circumvent. Someone usually posts a redirect within minutes of these articles' being linked here.

irollboozers2• 12 years ago

Surely someone at WSJ is wondering "Hey, this article is doing really well in organic search. Our numbers are up, great job everyone."

baddox3• 12 years ago

It's absurd in the context of social norms and expectations. A restaurant isn't a 501(c) either, but I would call it absurd if they charged a customer to use the restroom.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

One suspects that there are plenty of more primary sources for this matter. (Also the WSJ is a Rupert Murdoch mouthpiece, and bypassing its paywall is a mitzvah.)

jp555• 12 years ago

You think the people at the WSJ should work for free? I think that's absurd.

Have you never attempted to read original scientific papers? Most are hidden behind paywalls. Search for yourself - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gquery/

mrqwerty• 12 years ago

Not true, or at least depends on the field. I am able to find 80% of the maths, physics, comp sci papers that interest me. I think reducing all human interaction into a measure of value is absurd - but there you go, each to his own.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

You seem to be implying that the WSJ is the exclusive source for this information. Is that true? It strikes me as unlikely, to say the least.

seccess• 12 years ago

"Scientists are analyzing the data to see whether the organic compounds detected by Philae are simple ones—such as methane and methanol—or a more complex species such as amino acids"

I feel like there is a big difference between finding methane and finding amino acids on the comet. Surely, finding methane isn't all that interesting.

kileywm• 12 years ago

It would have interesting implications if it was produced by microorganisms. I don't know enough to comment further, but I'm guessing that's what the article was suggesting.

fsloth• 12 years ago

Organic compounds are just molecules that have carbon atoms in them. You don't need anything that is 'living' to produce them.

All life we have discovered on earth is based on carbon. So, finding these building blocks of life in space is interesting because it is solid proof you don't need to be on earth to produce them (something that might or might not seem intuitively obvious but in science you can't use intuition as proof, only as a guide). However, while making it a tiny bit more likely, it does not mean anything is alive out there.

fsiefken• 12 years ago

Glycine has been found on comet Wild 2, so chances are good Philae found amino acids.

gus_massa• 12 years ago

The aminoacids (and even more complex molecules) can be formed without life when the UV-rays hit simpler molecules and they rearrange "randomly".

For example, you can read:

In dirty ice like comets: http://www.astrochem.org/sci/Amino_Acids.php

In interestelar clouds: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2003/aug/11/amino-a...

dang2• 12 years ago

Url changed from http://online.wsj.com/articles/rosetta-probe-directly-discov... because that one is behind a paywall and this one is a more original source.

Rosetta Probe Discovers Organic Molecules on Comet

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