Post by account_disabled on Aug 30, 2023 4:31:13 GMT -5
By an asteroid impact, surfing an ejectum and crashing on another planet is quite a ride. Could bacteria – or more primitive forms of life – survive it? Assuming microbes survive the impact of an asteroid “picking them up”, and don’t burn due to friction with the atmosphere, they must face low temperatures, radiation, vacuum, and a few other things you would not enjoy being exposed to.
This is the fourth objective of BIOMEX: assessing the so-called “lithopanspermia” theory, a not-so-far-fetched Switzerland Mobile Number List possibility that life can be carried by rocks from one planet to another. In particular, we’re looking into the possibility that life travelled from Earth to Mars… or vice versa.
The study published today in Nature Communications used computer modelling to screen a large material database of thousands of candidates to find a material that can separate xenon and krypton. These volatile radionuclides usually escape in the gasses emitted as byproducts of the chemical process.
We spoke with author Praveen K Thallapally of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory about the study.
ResearchGate: Can you tell us what you found? Praveen Thallapally: We discovered a new material called metal organic framework (SBMOF-1) that can selectively trap Xenon (Xe) from air at room temperature. RG: How would this material work in practice? How does it improve upon current methods?
Thallapally: The existing methods for this separation in the nuclear reprocessing industry and from air includes the cryogenic distillation.
This is the fourth objective of BIOMEX: assessing the so-called “lithopanspermia” theory, a not-so-far-fetched Switzerland Mobile Number List possibility that life can be carried by rocks from one planet to another. In particular, we’re looking into the possibility that life travelled from Earth to Mars… or vice versa.
The study published today in Nature Communications used computer modelling to screen a large material database of thousands of candidates to find a material that can separate xenon and krypton. These volatile radionuclides usually escape in the gasses emitted as byproducts of the chemical process.
We spoke with author Praveen K Thallapally of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory about the study.
ResearchGate: Can you tell us what you found? Praveen Thallapally: We discovered a new material called metal organic framework (SBMOF-1) that can selectively trap Xenon (Xe) from air at room temperature. RG: How would this material work in practice? How does it improve upon current methods?
Thallapally: The existing methods for this separation in the nuclear reprocessing industry and from air includes the cryogenic distillation.