from Hacker News

Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroid Sample

by kumarm on 6/28/24, 12:25 AM with 41 comments

• by pfdietz on 7/1/24, 1:43 PM

  Small bodies in the early solar system were likely heated by short lived radionuclides, which were injected into the gas cloud that formed the solar system by a nearby supernova explosion. Remnants of the decay of such isotopes have been found in primitive grains in meteorites.

  This heating would have kept the bodies warm enough for liquid water to exist in their interiors for a periods of perhaps some millions of years. The total volume of these could have been quite large, and offers the interesting possibility that life originated in our Solar System in one of these bodies, not on Earth itself. If so, this could explain why life appeared on Earth so early: if OoL tends to occur in such bodies, it either happens early (before they freeze up) or it doesn't occur at all. This would counter the inference that because life originated early on Earth, OoL must be a high probability event.

  The presence of phosphate minerals is mildly promising as phosphate is somewhat rare and is biologically essential in nucleic acids, ATP, and some cell membranes.

• by mjevans on 7/1/24, 8:33 AM

  What if the origin of Osiris-Rex (Asteroid) is higher energy debris from a major impact to Earth during the early stages of organic life on the planet. Wasn't one theory (?) for our moon's creation such an impact and then a large mass splitting off to form the moon? I could easily imagine smaller bodies with higher local concentrations of energy being ejected from such an event.

• by prewett on 7/1/24, 1:58 PM

  > These rocks have retained their original state, having neither melted nor resolidified since their inception

  How are they able to tell that?