Rachel Roberts
5/8/19
Patel, Neel V. “An Asteroid's Water May Offer Clues to the Origin of Life on Earth.” Popular
For Current Event 11, I read the article, “An asteroid's water may offer clues to the origin of life on Earth” by Neel V. Patel. The article focused on an asteroid called Itokawa, which is 1,800 feet long and 1,000 feet wide and a remnant of a larger asteroid. Nine years ago, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA gathered samples of Itokawa and brought them down to Earth. And to scientists’ surprise, they found that the samples contained water. Maitrayee Bose, a cosmochemist at Arizona State University said, “Before we embarked on this work, our back of the envelope calculations showed that it is indeed possible for the Itokawa grains to retain the original water in the right proportion from when the asteroid formed” However, they found it unlikely as Itokawa has been heated up to 1,500° Fahrenheit and has been impacted by other rocks which would have made it extremely hard to preserve the water. Bose convinced JAXA to make five sample grains of the 1,500 available for study. In those five samples, two of them seemed to contain pyroxene which on Earth, is a mineral that holds water in its crystalline structure. This led Bose to believe that maybe asteroid pyroxene contained water as well. He used his university’s NanoSIMS instrument, an ion mass spectrometer with the ability to measure mineral grains with extraordinary sensitivity. They found that the pyroxenes in the asteroid were rich in water with a large amount of 0.1%. While this may not seem like much in comparison to the amount we see on Earth, it is much more than any scientist predicted as Itokawa is a very dry asteroid. The discovery of water in the small samples taken from Itokawa lead researchers to speculate if the asteroid could harbor more and how many other dry asteroids could contain water.
The information and research gained from discovering the 0.1% of water in the Itokawa asteroid samples could help scientists figure out how and why the Earth is rich in water. Scientists like Bose make their research aimed at how small bodies in the solar system acquire and sustain the building blocks for life. He said, “We find ourselves on this ‘pale blue dot,’ a planet full of water, rich in organics and supportive of life, we know of no other such planet. My aim is to find out how.” A theory for this issue is that asteroids and other small satellites could be able to send materials and life to planetary bodies. Bose said, “The most popular scenario is that water-rich asteroids delivered water on Earth from the outer solar system during different periods of planetary formation. Small asteroid bodies in the inner solar system could be a source of water for Earth and other planets. You can think of these small bodies… as being the fundamental building blocks of planets, bringing water and other materials, like organics, to the planets.” The discovery of water in Itokawa supports this theory as it shows how materials needed for life can travel on asteroids and brings us a step closer to discovering the beginnings of life.
When reading the article by Neel V. Patel, there were many good aspects of his writing. He explained the information in the article very well. I was able to understand it although I have very limited to no previous knowledge of the topic. Also, he integrated the story of Bose finding water in the asteroid into his article while also giving the main details of the research. This allowed me to get a full picture of how important this topic was and how it could affect research. While Patel did an excellent job explaining the research and the story, the article could use too many scientific terms without any explanations. It often confused me as I wouldn’t know what was being mentioned at the moment. It would be much better if there were information mentioned directly after or in parentheses so there could not be any confusion on the topics. When writing articles for a website that is open for anybody of any career or interest to look at, it is best to be specific when introducing new information and topics so more people would be able to understand it fully.
Will Grant 5/16/19
ReplyDeleteCore Bio Current Event 12
Patel, Neel V. “An Asteroid's Water May Offer Clues to the Origin of Life on Earth.” Popular
Science, 3 May 2019, www.popsci.com/asteroid-water#page-2.
After reading Rachel’s review of Neel V. Patel’s, “An Asteroid's Water May Offer Clues to the Origin of Life on Earth,” I found 3 things I really liked. The first thing I found was that Rachel did a great job in defining certain scientific terms, like Pyroxene and NanoSiMS. The second thing Rachel did was her explanation of the importance of these asteroids. Her explanation on these asteroids being fundamental building blocks of planets was quite interesting. The third thing that I noticed her do well was her way of making her own point of view on the topic. I could tell that a lot of the stuff she was saying was her take on the topic and not just what the author said.
Though Rachel wrote a very good review I still found some mistakes. The first of these being some small grammar mistakes. In the first sentence the title of the article in the quotes should be capitalized, not lowercase. There were a couple more mistakes but they were not that bad. The second thing I noticed was Rachel’s suggestion for improvement of the article was a little repetitive. Some of the paragraph just felt unnecessary as it had already been said.
The major takeaway from this review I got was these water filled asteroids. Even though they had such little amounts of water, all these asteroids eventually formed the oceans we see today and that is crazy. It also reminds me of the increasing water levels and how these asteroids brought a crazy amount of water to the Earth as we can see now.