Scientists say they have found traces of extraterrestrial material buried in volcanic deposits from 3.3 billion years ago.
"This is the first time we've found concrete evidence of carbon in extraterrestrial rock," said Frances Westall, an astrobiologist at the CNRS Center dor Molecular Biophysics.
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For billions of years, Earth has been showered by meteorites that hit hard and rearranged the planet's surface. In a volcanic deposit called Josefsdal Chert which is part of the Makhonjwa mountains, Westall and his team found a rock layer 2 mm thick marked by two 'anomalous' signals.
Using Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, the researchers found a 3.3 billion-year-old rock containing two types of insoluble organic material that suggest an extraterrestrial origin.
One of the EPR signals resembles something scientists have seen before in carbon chondrites - ancient samples of meteorites containing organic compounds.
Another anomaly signal reading showed nickel, chromium and iron nanoparticles. These materials are rarely found in terrestrial rock formations so that they are thought to come from a distant place.
"Ni-rich chrome spinels, also known as 'cosmic spinels', are formed during the entry of space objects into the Earth's atmosphere," said Didier Gourier, principal investigator and chemist at PSL Research University.
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In their hypothesis, the researchers suggest that micrometeorite hail may have mixed in the atmosphere with the volcanic ash cloud. And as that material slowly drifts to Earth's surface, an extraterrestrial carbon footprint is preserved alongside the newly formed cosmic spinels and stored for billions of years.
Of course this is still hypothetical. Even so, the discovery is the largest in the history of space organic science. Researchers only need to study it further.
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