DNA's Cosmic Origins, Martian Metal Hotspots, and Mapping the Milky Way's Edge

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, Episode fifty well broadcast on the twenty seventh of April twenty twenty six. Coming up on space Time, the key ingredients of DNA found in the asteroid Ryugu, discovery of a metal rich hotspot in an ancient Martian lake, and the edge of the Milky Way galaxy finally revealed all that and more. Coming up on space Time. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. A new study is confirmed at all five fundamental molecules needed to make up DNA and RNA, which underpins life as we know it, have been discovered in samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu. While DNA the fameule helix, functions as a genetic blueprint, single stranded RNA acts as a messenger, converting DNA instructions for implementation. Back in twenty twenty three, scientists detected one of these key nucleobases, urasyl, in the Ryugo samples. Nucleobases are nitrogen containing organic molecules which make up both DNA and RNA. Without nucleobases, the genetic code that allows organisms to grow, reproduce, and evolve would not exist. The new findings reported in the general Nature astronomy show. The asteroid contains all five nucleobases ursyl adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. These molecules combined with sugars and phosphates to yield nucleotides and building blocks of genetic material. By studying nucleotides in Ryugo samples, scientists can reconstruct the chemical history of primitive asteroids, and this in turn gives us a better understanding of how the building blocks of life may have been formed across the Solar System. The new discovery comes after these same building blocks of life were also detected in the asteroid Banu, and that suggests that they are abundant right throughout the Solar System. By stating asteroids like Ryugu and Banu, scientists have a chance to explore long standing ideas that life first began on Earth when asteroids carrying the fundamental chemical building blocks of life crashed into the planet long ago. The Raygu samples were collected by Japan's higher BUSSA two spacecraft, which launched back in twenty fourteen on a three hundred million kilometer long journey to the nine hundred meter wide near a f asteroid. The mission collected two samples of rock, weighing a total of five point four grams, bringing them back to Earth and parachuting down into the warmer rocket range in our Back, South Australia in twenty twenty. The discovery indicates that primitive asteroids could produce and preserve molecules that are important for the chemistry related to the origins of life. It also reinforces the idea the carbonaceous asteroids contributed to the pre rhroibiotic chemistry inventory of the early Earth. The authors compared the amount of each nuclear base detected in ray Yugu to that in two different meteorrites or Gwill and Murchison, finding the qualities varied depending on their history. The Murchison media rite fell in Victoria back in nineteen sixty nine and the Augwill media right in France in eighteen sixty four. Birth had previously yielded a rich variety of organic molecules, including nucleobases. They also identified a correlation between the ratios of the building blocks and the concentration of another key chemical for life, ammonia. Professor Clitti Rits from Curtain University says that discovery has important implications for how biologically key molecules may have originally formed and promoted the genesis of life on Earth. Nuclear basis the fundamental letters of life genetic code. These are organic molecules that could form the building blocks of DNA and RNA, and they have five nucleops which are adminine, guanine, citing, farming, and urosol. And these molecules pair specifically in the DNA and r in its gore and transmit genetic information. Was it expected to be able to find these collectively the lot of them in sample of asteroid material. It's not quite rare to find these all five in asteroids are big previous work where they find a few of them, they're not of five. By looking at different asteroid samples, not just the ones from Ryugu, but also from Benu and others as well, we've been able to determine that different asteroids with different backgrounds have different levels of these nuclear bases. Yes, DEAs how the aroids and collected. So the RIDEO was collected in a capsule and was transported back to pretty much Christine and then was analyzed in pristine conditions, whereas the Merchantin sample, which was done many years ago was probably contemp contamination from stressal sources on Earth. So it's the way that the samples are collective and treated in the laboratory, which makes this one unique because it has all the five nucleotides in it. I remember, not all that long ago, having a look at the sample of the Murchison media, right, and I was just fascinated by this little gray piece of little dark gray piece of rock and just looking at it and dreaming of where it came from and what it's seen in its existence since it was formed like four point six billion years ago. They really are magic, aren't they? Yeah? Amazing? How does one do the research. Really, as you know, not touch the sandls in ultrapus chromatography compared with high resolution mass spectrometry to isolate and identify these trace programmic molecules, including these nuclear places. And yeah, these methods allow very small amounts of molecules, particularly in asteroid materials and even deep time geological samples. What sort of conclusions can you draw? Basically, the presence of all these types of nuclear tides in the stacks, the basic chemical components of life maybe actually be white spread in space, which is quite astonishing. And what that doesn't mean there was life on Redeus. It's a parts of the idea that afterwards could have delivered key pre biotic ingredients to the earlier For these findings are pretty important to help us understand chemical building blocks from life that comes from naturally in space fideing crucial insight into the origin of life on our planets are pretty important. So it tells us that life on Earth might be unique. It can't be sure, can't we not? With these findings, I. Think it's starting to stack up, you know, with the sort of samples with nuclear tides. Then more that it's found, the more evidence there might be. I think using either topic tools as. Well, let's prophysically griss from Curtain University, and this is space time still to come discovery of a metal rich hot spot and ancient Martian lake and scientists finally find the edge to the Milky Way Galaxy. All that and more still to come on space time that is, Mars Curiosity rover has discovered the highest concentrations of iron, manganese, and zinc ever found in one place on the Red planet. A report in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets says the metal rich hotspot was found on the floor of what a piece to have been an ancient, shallow Martian lake. The minerals with these metals were found in remarkably well preserved ripples in rocks. Preserved ripples are evidence of a past lake dating back to a time when Mass was a warmer, wet world compared to the freeze dried desert it is today. Similar metal rich deposits forming lakes on Earth through chemical reactions known as reduction oxidation or redox reactions in places that are almost always inhabited by microbes. Finding similar environments on Mars means the red planet was home to an ancient lake that at the very least had conditions favorable for life. The ancient lake was located high up on Mount Sharp, the five and a half kilometatol Central Peak. In gal Crater curiosity Keemcam instrument science team member Patrick Gazder from the Los Alamos National Laboratory says the rock was deposited during an era on Mars when the climate was already starting to dry out. He says, back in ancient Mars, when it was wetter, lakes in craters were common, and it seems that as Mars became drier, and colder lakes that formed less frequently were also very short lived. KEEMCAM uses a technique called laser induced breake down spectroscopy, which zap's rocks to create plasma and then collects the light from that plasma to understand what elements were present in the rock. Consequently, on the planet's surface, Curiosity has been exploring a large sedimentary mound, which scientists believe shows the transition from a warm and wet phile silicon rich to a cold and tria sulfate rich mars. The discovery of Redock's active metals such as iron and manganese could indicate that life would have thrived in the lake as it ever existed on the Red planet. That's because some forms of microbial life on Earth use these same metals as energy sources. So these iron, manganese, and zinc deposits can lay the groundwork for future research on the Red planet. This is space time still to come. Scientists finally determine the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, and later on the Science Report, it seems the sky Neet terminators of fiction a fast becoming reality, with new bipedal humanoid robots easily up forming humans all that and more still to come on space time. Astronomers have for the first time identified where the star forming region of our Milky Way Galaxy ends, finding it occurs some forty thousand light years from the galactic center. By comparison, our own Sun and Solar system are located twenty seven thousand light years from the heart of the galaxy. The findings were reported in the journal Astronomy in Astrophysics based on an analysis of the ages of bright giant stars combined with advanced computer simulations of galaxy evolution. The method unveiled a U shaped pattern in the distribution of the ages of stars, which helped pinpoint the edge of the Milky Way galaxies star forming regions. The question of how far the Milky Way's disc extends has long been difficult to define, see it doesn't end sharply, but gradually fades away at its outer edges. The studies lead author, called for Tenny, who's now at the University of in Serbia, says the extent of the Milky Ways star forming disc has long been an open question in galactic archaeology. Fintenni says that by mapping house stellar ages change across the galactic disc. Astronomers now have a clear quantity of answer. You see, galaxies don't form stars uniformly across their discs. Instead, they build themselves from the center outwards. Star formation begins in a galaxy's dense central regions and then gradually extends outwards over billions of years, a process astronomers call inside out growth. This means that in general, on average, stars are younger the further away they are from the galactic center. That means that the outer disc is where star formation has only recently reached, and the research reveals that in our Milky Way galaxy, the average age of stars does indeed decrease with distance from the galactic center. The author has found that around thirty five thousand to forty thousand light years from the center of the galaxy, the trend starts to reverse and the stars start to get older again with increasing distance, and it's this reversal which creates this characteristic U shaped age profile. By comparing the signature with the state of the art computer galaxy simulations, the authors showed that the age minimum marks a sharp drop in star formation efficiency, confirming it as the true boundary of the Milky Way star forming disc. Of course, that begs the question, if star formation starts to drop off sharply at this boundary, why are there are so many stars still beyond it. The answer lies in a process called radial migration. Stars gradually drift outwards from where they're born by surfing on the spiral waves that sweep through the galaxy. Just as ocean surfers catch a wave that carries them towards the shore, stars can catch riots on the spiral arms of the galaxy, gradually moving outwards from their birthplaces. Since stellar migration is a slow, random process, with stars catching different spiral arms at different times, it takes progressively longer for stars to reach even larger distances beyond the radius where star formation ends, and it's this which creates the observed pattern with the very further stars beyond the age minimum are also the oldest. Crucially, these stars move unnarly circular orbits around the galactic center, and that rules up the possibility that they're flung into large radii by collisions between galaxies. Their presence in the Arter disc is the quite cumulative result of internal galactic dynamics alone. A key point about the stars in the Arter disc is that they're on close to circular orbits. That means they had to have been formed within the disc itself, more proof that these stars aren't the result of being scattered to large radii by endfalling satellite galaxies or galactic collisions. To reach their conclusions, the authors analyzed over one hundred thans and giant stars using data from the spectroscopical most of Apergy surveys, combined with accurate measurements from the European Space Agency's guy A satellite, which has been mapping the position and motions of stars across the Milky Way. As to the question of why the majority of star formation drops off at forty thousand light years from the center of the galaxy, although remains unclear, the leading suspects of the Milky Way's central stellar bar its gravitational influence may have cause guests to pull a certain radii, or it could be the galaxies outer warp, where the disc bends and potentially disrupt staff formation. This is Space Time and time out to take a brief look at some of the other stories making using science this week with the Science Report, a new study claims young Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders are a lot less happy today than what the counterparts were fifteen years ago. The findings published in the twenty twenty six World Happiness Report correlates with increased social media use. However, other countries don't show the same trend. In fact, most under twenty five year olds in other parts of the world are a lot happier nowadays than the counterparts fifteen years ago, and Latin American countries have both higher social media use and relatively high levels of youth happiness. While noting that social media's effects on world being are complex and may vary with the types of social platforms involved, report concludes that heavy use may play a role in the decreased level of happiness in under twenty fives in English speaking countries, especially for girls. A new study warns that gay guys with left leading political views are the most likely to be gold diggers. The findings by the Behavioral and Social Sciences Institute shows the stereotype that gold diggers are mostly money focused women simply isn't true. The research, led by psychologists Learnard Freeth, surveyed three undred and fifty one adults across the range of sexual orientations to assess preferences in partners for marital benefits as opposed to emotional intimacy. The study on what a turned mercenary predators or gold diggers, reported in the journal SSR and looked at personality traits including narcissism, machiavelianism, psychopathy, and sadism, along with social and demographic factors such as political views, city size, and their perceived value of a potential mate. And The authors found that gay men with left leaning political views showed the highest rates of gold digging, described as a partly psychopathy linked social tactic. The study showed that in both sexes, gold digging is linked to narcissism, psychopathy, date investment expectations, and the perceived value of a mate. The data for females showed left leaning lesbians scored higher than straight women or right leaning lesbian scored lower, and interestingly, sat and was only found in female gold diggers. The authors warned potential targets to be wary of performative men, those who appear especially sensitive, compassionate, and pathetic or progressive, but are ultimately motivated primarily by money. The authors found that both male and female gold diggers tend to be reckless. Narcissists used charm and their appearance to attract wealthy victims. A Chinese humanoid bipeter robot named Lightning As lived up to its name, thrashing its human competition in the Beijing half marathon. The robot took just fifty minutes and twenty six seconds to cover the twenty one kilometa race, at seven minutes faster than the current world half marathon records set in Lisbon last month. In fact, robots made it a clean sweep, also taking second and third places on the podium. The fastest human in the Beijing race took an hour, seven minutes and forty seven seconds. Most of the robots competing were autonomous, running the full race distance on their own as they navigated turns, uneven terrains and other obstacles. Whilst some see it all as a great advance in robotics, others warn it brings us a step closer to a Skynet Terminator style future, with AI powering the machines and despotic governments arming them. In fact, China's already started using robotic quadruped dogs armed with assault rifles and missile or grenade launchers for use in urban warfare. A new survey of scientists has found that most believe that life exists elsewhere in the universe beyond Earth. The findings, reported in the General Nature Astronomy, found that some eighty six point six percent of the surveyed responded that they either agree or strongly agree that it's likely that extraterrestrial life exists elsewhere in the universe. Less than two percent disagreed with the statement, and twelve percent remain neutral. When it came to complex or intelligent extraterrestrial life forms, the results showed that sixty seven point four percent agreed and fifty eight point two percent strongly agreed. The skeptics timendens is the findings reflect the vast size of the universe and the chances of life only ever having developed once across the intire cosmos. This headline, which is from the Daily Mail, ninety five percent of educated people believe in alien life. The thing is educated by people means I'm want to say about a couple of thousand scientists or non scientists, some astrobiologists and non astrobiologists could be anybody, So they got a better just over a thousand responses. So what we're saying is only people who are interested in this topic to begin with replied yes. Which is sort of like a by response, and eighty six percent of the astrobiologists responded either agree or strongly agree that there is extraterrestrial life of at least a basic kind, which means basical kind could be just bacteria or whatever protozois or something right fungus. When the story about the Allen Hills media right first saw the light of day, this is the media right. They found in that Arctica a place called Allen Hills. When they opened it up and had a look inside, they found these crystals which looked like they were the fossilized remains of bacteria. A lot of people well said no, no, no, it couldn't be, couldn't be, it's too small. Well, we then found bacteria here on Earth which is the same size as these. And when I spoke to a number of astronomers about these this topic, I was talking to them about different subjects. Whenever I raised the Allen Hills meteorite story, they all agreed, Yeah, if they didn't know it was extraterrestrial, they would have thought it was vitialized bacteria from Earth only because that extraterrestrial origin that they're hesarded about saying that. And as Carl Sagan says, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That's right, and extraordinary claims often require release a headlines. So basically, the majority of these people educated people. Fact they believe in the possibility, not the reality, but the possibility of some form of life out there in space. Now, when you come to intelligent life, the number goes down dramatically. There's still a decent amount of people on Earth. Yes, bugger all here on Earth is the phrase, I believe. But yeah, the number does go down, but it's still significant. So what people are saying is they're open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life of some sort or another. In most cases, they're talking about things you can't have a cup of tea with. If you take out of people who don't know, who are neutral, then you get a much higher number. Well, of course you would, wouldn't it. It talks of most people they think there's possibly life out there somewhere, not life as we know it. As they say that, yeah, possibility, No one's going to say impossible, especially considering on the number of planets and moons and whatever you have out there in the universe where there's at the same time as us. For intelligent life is a different issue entirely, But it's an overblown headline of a yeah really, you. Know, sort of contemplating your idea of having a cup of tea with. It the sugar. But yeah, they're like a biscuit. Maybe they don't very serious theory that there is alien life out there somewhere, but any alien life intelligent enough to develop interstellar travel has probably already destroyed itself. Yes, that's right, they're not going to be at the same time as us, and there's a lot of time out there in the university to play with. It's a strange thing. There's a strange headline more than a strange results. That's the skeptics timendum and this space Time, and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through at bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. 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