"Scientists led by Sunao Hasegawa from JAXA, the Japanese space agency, reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Monday that two objects, 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, spotted in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter appear to have originated beyond Neptune.
Both also have an unusual color. Objects in the inner solar system tend to reflect more blue light because they are devoid of organic material — things like carbon and methane — whereas objects in the outer solar system are redder because they have a lot of organics, perhaps the building blocks of life on Earth.
“In order to have these organics, you need to initially have a lot of ice at the surface,” said Michaël Marsset from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a co-author on the paper. “So they must have formed in a very cold environment. Then the solar irradiation of the ice creates those complex organics.”
These two rocks, as it turns out, are extremely red — more red than anything else seen in the asteroid belt. While tentative hints of other red asteroids have been found, these two appear to be special.
The finding, if correct, would offer evidence for planetary migration in the early solar system, particularly in support of an idea called the Nice Model, with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all moving outward, and Jupiter inward slightly, over a few hundred million years. This would have perturbed organic-laden asteroids leftover from the formation of the planets, sending them pinging around the solar system.
“It’s an exciting discovery with implications for the origins of life,” Dr. Öberg said."
Thus, this hypothesis of the origin of life seems simple. Asteroids that are far from the Sun and therefore covered with ice are producing organic matter and become red due to the Sun's rays. Thanks to the planetary migration now discovered, this organic matter comes into a warmer place, closer to the Sun, such as the Earth, and becomes the basis of life.
The hypothesis could be tested by using red asteroid organic matter to create primitive life on Earth.
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