Different Directions - Moon & Meteorites

Orgueil (uhr geuy) came to Earth just after 8 pm in the evening - a luminous meteor with sonic booms, and broke apart, showering a two mile area around the hamlet of Orgueil, France, with stones, some as big as heads, others fist sized, twenty recovered.

It was reported that one specimen was immediately examined by the French scientist François Stanislaus Cloëz, Professor of Chemistry at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, who commented that it contained carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and its composition was very similar to peat from the Somme valley or to the lignite of Ringkohl near Kassel

As a result, several eminent chemists, Gabriel-Auguste Dubrée and Marcellin Berthelot, analyzed samples and confirmed the existence of organic materials in Orgueil.

These results caused quite a stir within the scientific community. Keep this in mind, 1846: The false idea about spontaneous generation on Earth was still being heatedly discussed. So, given Pasteur's famous announcement he had disproved the theory of spontaneous generation, the Orgueil findings shifted the debate for some to whether such generation was possible in space.

As a result, Pasteur himself examined the Orgueil meteorite, and according to reports he meticulously searched for growth of any microorganisms from inside the meteorite. The results were negative.

Side Trip – Spontaneous Generation

Here's some background.

While this theory is now seen as obsolete regarding the origin of life from inanimate matter, it once was considered true.

Spontaneous Generation held that life could come from inanimate matter and that the process was a commonplace and everyday occurrence, although it did recognize the role of parents.

The theory was synthesized by Aristotle, who compiled and expanded the work of prior natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations for the appearance of organisms. And the theory was recognized as true for two millennia.

However, the experiments of Louis Pasteur ultimately showed that Spontaneous Generation was wrong.

As a result, science soon developed modern theories about germs and cells, supported with the knowledge of the life cycles of various life forms.

However, the question of abiogenesis, how living things originally arose from non-living material, remains relevant today.

Note In the natural sciences, abiogenesis is the study of how life on Earth could have arisen from inanimate matter. It should not be confused with evolution, which is the study of how groups of already living things change over time. Most amino acids, often called "the building blocks of life", can form via natural chemical reactions unrelated to life, as demonstrated in the Miller–Urey experiment and similar experiments, which involved simulating the conditions of the early Earth. (wikipedia)

As new scientific techniques and tools are developed, researchers frequently revisit well-known meteorites, and Orgueil, because it is such a rare type of carbonaceous chondrite, has continued to provide fresh scientific information, as well as controversy.

Recent Analysis

While there have been many studies conducted on the Orgueil meteorite, here's two recent ones that are still holding up.

The assembled team used sophisticated techniques and instruments aimed at detecting trace levels of amino acids.

After obtaining a pristine piece of the interior of Orgueil, the researchers found that it contained a relatively simple mixture of amino acids, consisting primarily of

The sample's carbon isotope concentration was also analyzed. The amino acids were not derived from Earth contamination but were almost certainly synthesized chemically in space.

These results were compared with three other meteorites: Murchison, Murray, and Ivuna, (Tanzania, Africa, 1938), which had never been analyzed for amino acids.

Based on the unique amino acid composition within Orgueil, the researchers were able to deduce information about its past.

While Murchison and Murray were believed to be pieces of an asteroid - as are virtually all meteorites so far studied - Orgueil and Ivuna showed evidence they were likely derived from a comet.

The amino acid signatures within Orgueil and Ivuna suggested their internal compounds were likely synthesized from components such as hydrogen cyanide, recently observed in comets Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake.

This 2001 study suggests the organic material in Orgueil and Ivuna was the product of reactions that once took place in the nucleus of a comet. If true, these meteorites are the first to be identified as coming from a cometary nucleus, and they add evidence that amino acids helped generate life on Earth – delivered by meteorites that were derived from the remnants of comets.

2004 Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) raised the possibility of fossilized biological remains in Orgueil.

Hoover showed images at the International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology from a freshly fractured specimen of Orgueil. Hoover's samples were taken in July 2004 using the Environmental- and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy at MSFC in Huntsville, Alabama.

The pictures appeared to show forms in the meteorite that closely resembled mats of known terrestrial fossilized cyanobacteria, such as Phormidium tenuissimum.

On Earth, such cyanobacteria form their mats only underwater on surfaces exposed to sunlight.

However, the specimen of Orgueil studied by Hoover had not been submerged since its arrival on Earth (it would have dissolved), nor was its interior open and exposed to sunlight on Earth.. Furthermore, the putative fossils would not represent isolated single cells, but whole ecologies. The implication is that they must have grown on the meteorite's parent body before it fell.

However, as in the case of other claims regarding extraterrestrial fossils aboard meteorites, this new piece of evidence is unlikely to be readily accepted by the scientific establishment until it can be rigorously shown that

In 1962, when scientists looked at a piece of Orgueil that had been stored in a sealed glass jar since 1864, they found, to their surprise, a plant fragment and piece of coal embedded in it.

Edward Anders and colleagues, ruled out that the contamination was not accidental "since coal was not used as a household fuel in southern France during the 1860s, but was found mainly in blacksmiths' forges."

If someone contaminated the meteorite deliberately in 1864, was there a motive for the hoax?

The researchers wrote, that "perhaps, in April 1864, only a few weeks before the fall of Orgueil, French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur delivered his famous lecture discrediting spontaneous generation of life to the French Academy.”

Spontaneouws Generation was a notion that life could originate from inanimate matter. The research team think that perhaps a person of the "proper disposition" was inspired to play a practical joke on the scientists or otherwise stimulate debate on spontaneous generation.

"Somehow the plot failed, and the contaminated stone went unrecognized for 98 years." So, it turns out that a seed from a European rush or woody shrub was glued into a piece of the meteorite.

Pretending to have a space plant stuck in a meteorite seems like a B movie plot today, considering we have meteorites with authentic, extraterrestrial amino acids and the building blocks of genes.

Little did the people from the 1800s know the truth would be more fantastic than their attempted hoax.

Just The Specs

Terms

As with other meteorites, the unique composition of Orgueil can teach us about minerals, structure, our solar system, and ultimately the world we live on.

Definition of Amino acids