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Comment by cnnlives86 | Hacker News Reader

As I’ve been reading findings of extraterrestrial organic molecules recently, I wonder: do we know there was no contamination?

I’m going to be sad if it turns out someone sneezed into it and was afraid to tell their manager.

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There are papers covering contamination prevention and detection for every stage of the mission. There are papers with the designs and intentions before launch and papers with how well it went and their specific findings after return.

Here is one sick paper covering some of the clean rooms https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230005897

Awesome -- dozens of the top people in their fields have been working on the contamination problem and publishing about it for almost two decades.

    The curation team was integrated with mission design and operations from the beginning,
    as early as 2004 (section 3.0). That integration allowed curation-specific needs such as
    contamination knowledge to be incorporated into the mission design early, when adjustments had
    minimal cost impact. Not only did this early integration inform planning for sample
    characterization, cataloging, allocation, and the development of detailed sample handling and
    containment approaches; it was also an investment in the longer term needs of the community.
    Here we describe these preparations for OSIRIS-REx, as a reference for sample scientists and
    curators and as a model for future sample return missions.

Most organic molecules are different from it's mirrored version, and living thing usually produce only one version. But inorganic reactions produce an even mix of 50% and 50%. So in most cases it's easy to spot.

Also, some sugars or amino acids are very common here and others very rare, and the commet probably has another mix.

Also, the ammount of isotopes of the atoms (like Carbon 14) is probably different.

>”Once soft and flexible, but since hardened, this ancient “space gum” consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Such complex molecules could have provided some of the chemical precursors that helped trigger life on Earth”

That would be some stale big league chew if that were the case. By orders of billions of years. Making it the oldest wad of big league chew we know of in existence. ;)

I'm almost certain that the gum in baseball cards originated from the big bang.

Not the Big Bang, the Big Ban.

The ban of smoking or tobacco products on TV. Up until the 1980s, it was common to see a pitcher up there with a mouth full of Kodiak or Chaw. Spitting their nasty tobacco-stained split all over the mound.

I think the article does a good job clarifying in simple words those questions risen by the slightly click-baity title.

"I will assume that the experts involved have not taken any reasonable precautions, and learned nothing from the past 60 years of acquired experience in space exploration. I will then ask other non-experts in the field if the experts are minimally competent or not."

I was thinking the same as parent while reading this. Mentally this activates the same thinking as on those medical tests with a high false positive rate and low incidence, so that most positives are false. I'd like to see in the article how they rule this out. Ideally I'd like to hear that they have measures in place that would allow accidental lapses in isolation to fail and they'd still be able to tell that it was Earth contamination. It's a reasonable concern and having it addressed (with something more satisfying than "they're experts, duh!") makes this kind of finding all the more interesting.

I mean, it's a concern, but there are numerous other odd things in the findings that would not be caused by ground contamination such as the amount of stardust contained in these samples versus other asteroid samples, or the huge amounts of clay/water created minerals found so far.

There are plenty of other articles on the isolation procedures they've taken so far to this point including putting off opening the container for months because of a stripped screw.

Spot on.

"I'm just asking questions".

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