They then processed the residue under asteroid relevant conditions, also known as aqueous alteration. To determine to what extent amino acids formed from asteroid conditions and to what extent they were inherited from the interstellar molecular cloud, researchers simulated the formation of amines and amino acids as it would occur in the interstellar molecular cloud, forming an organic residue.
The proton bombardment smashed the ice molecules apart, the component parts then reassembling themselves as more complex organic molecules, including amines and amino acids such as ethylamine and glycine, in what Qasim calls an "organic residue" - a kind of gloopy slime.
#Qblocks cloud generator#
She used ices such as ammonia, carbon dioxide, methanol and water that are commonly found in interstellar clouds, and bombarded them with high-energy protons from a Van de Graff generator to replicate the ices being irradiated in space by cosmic rays. So Qasim set about replicating conditions in interstellar clouds to try and form amino acids. The molecular cloud could have provided the amino acids in asteroids, which passed them on to meteorites." "While there is no direct evidence of amino acids in interstellar clouds, there is evidence of amines. "The make-up of asteroids originated from the parental interstellar molecular cloud, which was rich in organics," said Qasim in a statement (opens in new tab) from SwRI.
Qasim's and Materese's research takes things even farther back in time to the interstellar cloud of molecular gas and dust from which the sun and planets eventually formed. Many studies have focused on trying to simulate the formation of amino acids in carbonaceous chondrites, which are meteorites from carbon-rich asteroids that formed at the dawn of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago.
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