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from the water+solar+electrolysis=rocket-fuel-and-oxidizer dept.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which "arrived" at the asteroid Bennu on December 3 but has been slowly approaching it for weeks, has found evidence of Bennu's interaction with liquid water in the past:
In a conference today, scientists announced that OSIRIS-REx has found evidence of hydrated minerals on the surface of Bennu using its on-board spectrometers - tools used to determine the exact chemical composition of a specific spot.
That means "evidence of liquid water" in Bennu's past, according to Amy Simon, the scientist overseeing OSIRIS-REx's spectral analysis.
"To get hydrated minerals in the first place, to get clays, you have to have water interacting with regular minerals," says Simon. "This is a great surprise."
And they're abundant, too. There's "strong convincing, evidence that the surface is dominated by these hydrated minerals," according to Dante Lauretta, leader of OSIRIS-REx's sample return mission, leading the team to believe Bennu is "water rich".
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:42PM (2 children)
if you were to scoop a huge piece of stuff from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Huge hunk of clay, in a near earth orbit? Tell me that it's not possible that it came from earth. A huge impact, and stuff goes flying. Eventually, some of it falls back to earth. Some of it takes a lot longer than other bits of stuff, but eventually, almost all of it comes back. It's a little late to fall on a dinosaur's head, but it can take out a bunch of the mammalian usurpers.
I said what I said. - Sophie Cunningham
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:27PM
According to standard ideas, the orbit of the asteroid cannot be traced to an origin on Earth; indeed, any such impact large enough to hurl material of that amount would not produce a large, cohesive chunk anyway.
Your idea is fun, but it appears to have no basis in the way the universe works, as far as we know.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:30PM
Not just a near earth orbit, but one that is one of the most likely of any known to impact earth.
They also found boulders standing on the surface with a diameter a significant fraction (~3% 15m/500m) of Bennu's total diameter, not sure if that helps or hurts the Runaway ejecta theory. Would be novel if we get the sample back in a few years and find traces of known organisms in it.