Carbonaceous chondrites are a type of meteorite rich in organic matter and contain samples of the materials involved in the creation of our planet nearly 4,600 million years. In fact, some of these materials probably formed even before our solar system, and could be crucial for the emergence of life on Earth.
The complex set of organic materials in carbonaceous chondrites may vary considerably from one meteorite to another.
New research shows that most of these variations are the result of hydrothermal activity that took place in the first few million years since the formation of the solar system, when meteorites were still part of larger bodies, probably asteroids.
The team led by Christopher Herd of the University of Alberta, Canada, and also includes Conel Alexander, Larry Nittler, Frank Gyngard, George Cody, Marilyn Fogel and Yoko Kebukawa Carnegie of Institution of Washington, studied four samples of meteorites rain stone fragmentation produced by a meteoroid entering the atmosphere and landed in January 2000 in the Tagish Lake in northern Canada. It is considered that this celestial object samples are very pure, as they fell into a frozen lake were which collected without contact with the hands a few days of collision, and have remained frozen since then.
The samples also contain amino acids, organic compounds essential to life, with that form proteins. The types and abundances of the amino acids in the samples are consistent with an extraterrestrial origin, and show a clear influence of the physical processes occurring in meteorites from which they come.
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