A spectacular treasure has been discovered in samples from the Dragon Palace, created outside of the Solar System, brought back to Earth by Japan’s Hayabusa-2 mission.
According to a publication in the journal Science on September 22, this treasure is a drop of water extracted from the analysis of 5.4 grams of precious dust collected by the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft from the Ryugu asteroid, which is located 300 million kilometers from Earth.
Illustration of Hayabusa-2 landing on the “Dragon Palace” – (Image: UNIVERSE TODAY)
Ryugu is named after the Dragon Palace from Japanese mythology and is an asteroid that formed before our Earth—approximately 2 million years after the Solar System began to form. This finding was concluded by the research team based on numerical simulations, utilizing the physical and mineralogical characteristics of the samples.
Asteroids like Ryugu have long been thought to originate from outside the Solar System, inadvertently drawn in by our parent star, carrying “seeds of life” including water and organic material to planets like Earth and Mars.
Young planets receive the most primordial materials from numerous collisions with asteroids and comets, from which oceans and living organisms, including us, developed and evolved.
Samples from Ryugu have been shared with various scientific teams around the world to maximize exploration opportunities.
The group led by Professor Tomoki Nakamura from Tohoku University in Japan, the principal author of the new study, is the largest team with about 150 members, including 30 from countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and China.
Professor Nakamura emphasized the immense value of this drop of water: “Many researchers believe that water was brought from space, but we have actually discovered water at Ryugu, a near-Earth asteroid, for the first time.”
A dust grain from Ryugu analyzed in the research – (Image: SCIENCE).
This is the only room-temperature liquid water sample discovered in the world to date. Moreover, it is a drop of carbonate water containing salts and organic compounds!
According to Nippon, to uncover this cosmic treasure, Professor Nakamura and his colleagues analyzed a total of 17 dust grains from Ryugu using various modern equipment, including the large synchrotron radiation facility SPring-8 located in Sayo, Hyogo Prefecture, Western Japan.
They meticulously examined the dust grains, which are 1-8 mm in diameter, carefully considering their structure, mineral composition, hardness, and numerous other properties.
This drop of water also contains carbon dioxide found in pyrrhotite crystals, confirming that the parent asteroid of Ryugu formed outside the Solar System.
The research team will continue to delve deeper into this treasure and hopes to provide clearer data about these seeds of life, believed to be similar to what ancient Earth received.
