Tennis Anyone...?
Space Balls Found on Earth
?Buckyballs? Brought Gas From Outer Space to Earth
By Deborah Zabarenko
W A S H I N G T O N, March 21 ? Weird gases from outer
space arrived on Earth in a dinosaur-killing
asteroid strike 65 million years ago, and survive
in molecular cages called buckyballs, researchers
reported today.
Buckyballs, lacy-looking molecules made up of carbon
atoms, are also known as fullerenes and are named in honor
of Buckminster Fuller because they are shaped like the
geodesic dome he invented.
They can form on Earth but are also born outside our
solar system, in hot areas of the universe such as the gas
envelopes around embryonic stars. The buckyballs in
question, scientists said, came in on the killer asteroid.
The gas-carrying buckyballs were found in various parts
of the globe, from North America to New Zealand to
Denmark, in a layer of sediment laid down after an ancient
asteroid impact.
?The buckyballs containing the gases arrived on Earth
about 65 million years ago during an asteroid impact that
scientists theorize ended the age of the dinosaurs,? said Ted
Bunch of NASA?s Ames Research Center in California.
Contain Strange Form of Helium
The impact of the big space rock may have killed the
dinosaurs and most earthly life with its globe-girdling dust
cloud, but the sturdy little buckyballs survived with their
gaseous cargo intact, Bunch and his colleagues reported in
the March 28 edition of the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
Inside the buckyballs was a strange type of cosmic
helium, along with other gases, Bunch said in a telephone
interview.
?They?re enriched helium 3,? Bunch said. ?We know by
the helium signature that it was formed probably outside the
solar system ... they?ve trapped them inside [the buckyballs]
at the site of formation.?
This weird helium shows, as no other evidence has, that
buckyballs can transport extraterrestrial gases without letting
them escape on the way. Future research may focus on
other gases that might have come to Earth in this fashion.
?We?re All Aliens?
This research also supports the theory that gases that make
up Earth?s atmosphere and organic compounds came to
Earth?s surface during the so-called age of bombardment,
some 3.8 billion to 4.5 billion years ago, when ?asteroids
were running wild in their orbits,? Bunch said.
This was the period when the Moon?s craters were
gouged out by asteroids, comets and meteors, which also
slammed into Earth, Mars and other celestial bodies.
Buckyballs probably drifted into the solar system early on,
bringing carbon and other material from far away.
?Most of the carbon in our bodies came from outside the
solar system,? Bunch said. ?We?re all aliens.? |
