60

A teaspoon’s worth of dark dust and granules scooped from an asteroid 200m miles from Earth has arrived at the Natural History Museum in London, where scientists are preparing to unlock its secrets.

Researchers at the museum received 100mg of the pristine material, which at 4.6bn years old dates back to the dawn of the solar system, after Nasa’s Osiris-Rex mission stopped at asteroid Bennu in 2020 and returned samples to Earth in September.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Knusper@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

Well, yeah, to some degree this was a shit take of "ackshually everything in the universe has existed in some form, at least since the Big Bang, quite possibly longer".

But to some degree, it also just felt like a weak explanation for the excitement, because even on Earth, you can drill into some rocks and find material which has been left untouched for a similar timespan.

While Earth also formed 4.6bn years ago, its crust did not cool out right away, so it would be valid, if they're specifically excited about this (comparatively) tiny timeframe.
But reading the actual article, it rather sounds like the more obvious excitement is, that it is simply dust from an asteroid and it hasn't been mostly burnt up from the usual way of asteroids entering Earth's atmosphere.

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

Fair point, I think the fact that this is wholly extraterrestrial is cooler than the age

this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
60 points (100.0% liked)

United Kingdom

4114 readers
218 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS