He will try to land on the comet probe to explore matters – Digital Journal Juarez

AFP | Sunday November 9, 2014 | 21:29 pm

Paris- The Philae robot, if you manage to land Wednesday at the nucleus of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, will immediately search for a mysterious Grail: his dark organic matter, which could lock the keys to understanding the emergence of life on Earth, said astrophysicist Francis Rocard.

The goal of the robot is drill holes into the ground after landing on the comet’s surface.

The samples will be analyzed in situ by the robot itself. Beyond the technical challenge is the unprecedented landing a robot on a comet which is what creates so much expectation?

“Comets are the most primitive objects in the solar system. He lived the majority of their lives far from the Sun, “he told AFP Rocard, head of the Rosetta program CNES.

” The stuff that makes not heated, and for that reason unchanged “adds Rocard. “I mean we keep in the freezer for about 4 000 560 million years the original material that formed the planets, asteroids …”

For scientists, comets have a double interest: “In the solar system, are the richest in objects frozen gases, water being one of them, and the most abundant. ” “They may have helped bring water to Earth,” he says.

“Comets are also the richest objects in carbon, the refractory part (ie the remaining solid at the current temperature comet, which is -70) has an unknown molecular shape. “

” These complex carbon chains concern us because a complex organic chemistry needed to produce life, “recalls Rocard, who is 57 years old and works from 20 for the Rosetta program does.

“Comets were able to provide these macromolecules to our planet and thereby contribute to the emergence of life.”

Breeding ground

The Earth, which appeared tens of million years after the formation of the solar system, was a massive bombardment by comets and asteroids, which stopped only 600 million years after its birth.

“From the moment when conditions improved and water stabilized liquid, falling comets may have seeded the oceans with complex molecules.”

“It could generate broth favorable to the synthesis of complex organic molecules crop. The material of comets, already wealthy, able to react in liquid medium. And be a prebiotic chemistry (prelude to the emergence of life) who was the first membrane and finally the first cells and life, “says Rocard.

Since 2006 the Stardust probe brought back dust comet containing glycine, an amino acid, elemental “brick” of proteins.

The other big question is whether some of the water present on Earth does not come from comets.

“It is thought that the Earth’s water, produced by a primitive degassing of the planet, was driven during giant impacts, especially that created the moon,” says the scientist.

This primitive water would then disappeared. And water currently present on Earth would actually “a foreign origin resulting massive bombing late 3000 that occurred 900 years ago.”