The carbonaceous part makes me think that that type of meteor may carry some residue of possible living things from outside Earth. I can imagine that scientists would get excited about that.

TM

Well, of course, I will trust the scientist and agree with him. Maybe signs of water, too?

I did read about this, but memory like a sieve, so there is little for me to go on here!

Cynthia

Ah, TM - I knew our resident scientist would have a very good idea!! Now, what they are particularly excited about is a 'nutritional supplement'.

Nancy.

Uhoh.

Thursday, Robert Ward said that he found a pair of fragments weighing about 10 grams each roughly 35 miles northeast of Sacramento nearby Sutter's Mill, the famous location where James W. Marshall discovered gold in 1848. "It was just, needless to say, a thrilling moment," Ward, who claims to have found meteorites on every continent save Antarctica. Meteors the size of the one that rattled windows from Central California to Nevada crash into our atmosphere about once a year but such events usually happen over the ocean or uninhabited land, Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office told the Associated Press. Ward, aka AstroBob, said the two fragments he found confirmed that the meteorite is a type called carbonaceous chondrite that has been kicking around in space since the formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago - making it "one of the oldest things known to man and one of the rarest types of meteorites there is," he told the news agency.

Pretty cool. Nancy.

Hmmm....no nibbles. Well, there are 20 of these 'building blocks' - 10 exist in our bodies, and the other 10 are gleaned from our food sources. A zero amount of any one of them can cause ill-health, loss of muscle. The first was discovered in 1806 by French chemists Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet. Any help?

Nancy.

Chuck thinks proteins/amino acids before I saw your most recent post. Still, that could fit, I think, although I know nothing about how many we have. :)

Chondrite makes me think of chondroitin (sp?) which we take for our joints, but darned if I know what that is exactly.

Yes, this is very cool. Will check back to see if anyone else adds anything.

Cynthia

ps. I bought two shrubs (exochorda x macrantha and kollwitzia), three hanging baskets for the deck (same thing I always get for there-scaevola because it is so easy and looks pretty from inside, too), and some impatients for the front and around the patio in back where the dogs may not ruin it. Maybe everyone else is gardening, too!

Good hint, Nancy. I know what you are looking for now: things like glycine, leucine, isoleucine, serine, etc.

TM

I've been busy, my greenhouse is now presentable. Three years worth of old pots and junk ferreted away in there plus a truck load of weeds, trimmings etc. are now resting at their new home, the local landfill, I'm pooped.

After two years of not doing much because of one thing or another I'm determined to get my garden back in some kind of order. I'm such a pack rat I know I'm going to have to go through my pots again, keep one, toss one you know how that goes.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I didn't want you to think I was ignoring you. I don't have a clue to today's trivia :(.

Annette

I read about this last week after my California brother-in-law sent us an e-mail about it. The meteorite was referred to as primitive meaning from the Big Bang and contained carbon and water and other early organic compounds (which were not listed). From the clues I also think you are referring to amino acids.

Well, you are a smart bunch - no fooling you. There was a lot of confusion about what actually happened a week ago Sunday morning, about 8:00 a.m. Listening to 911 calls, even patrol officers were not sure which side of the CA/NV border it fell on. The Los Angeles-Times says the fragments are invaluable to science, but can fetch up $1,000 a gram on the open market.

"We want to learn about this asteroid," Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer and senior research scientist at the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and the NASA Lunar Science Institute tells the Times. "This is scientific gold."

Brenda Salveson of Rescue, Calif., tells the newspaper that she found one stone while out walking her dog and showed it to a group of scientists nearby. She says they let out a "collective gasp" and carefully wrapped the 17-gram stone in foil, urging her to get it into a bank vault. They can be degraded by wear and weather.

This all occurred as part of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. In what I have read, it appears to have been part of the Thatcher comet! Or not, according to which expert you read. Hmmm...what kind of trivia questions could I have derived from that! It has been interesting researching this, as the story evolved and grew as the weekend progressed. Much of the earlier mis- or almost information has gone away!

It is believed that this meteor is a CM classification - the group takes its name from Mighei, but the most famous member is the extensively studied Murchison meteorite. Many falls of this type have been observed and CM chondrites are known to contain a rich mix of complex organic compounds like amino-acids and purine/pyrimidine nucleobases. The CM meteorite Murchison has over 70 extraterrestrial amino acids and other compounds including carboxylic acids, hydroxy carboxylic acids, sulphonic and phosphonic acids, aliphatic, aromatic and polar hydrocarbons, fullerenes, heterocycles, carbonyl compounds, alcohols, amines and amides. Now the 'wanted-to-be-a-scientist' in me wonders, if like the moon rocks not known to earth, whether these extraterrestrial amino acids will eventually be found down here on earth...again, depending on the sources you read the number of amino acids, even the number found in the human body, seems to change. Empirical evidence indeed.

The mini-van comparison is a visual reference only, btw - your standard Dodge Caravan weighs about 4,000 lbs. - the meteor probably weighed about 154,300 pounds.

So, for TM, Cyn (or should I say Chuck ;-)), and Bobbie:
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Thanks to all for playing - 'see' you next week. Nancy.

Here is a link that might be useful: Astro Bob interview

Thanks, Nancy, for another fun question, especially fun for me with the science slant.

TM

Thanks for the shooting stars, Nancy.

Fun and love the shooting stars, Nancy. Have a great week all.

Cynthia