The Nanoscale Molecular Chemistry Of Outer Solar System Organic Matter In Asteroid Ryugu
The analysis of biorelevant molecules in returned mission samples such as from the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu is key to unravelling the role of extraterrestrial organics in the evolution of life.
Coordinated analyses using minimally destructive techniques at the finest length-scales on pristine samples are particularly important. Here, we identify the chemical signature of unique globular and nitrogen-containing diffuse organic matter in asteroid Ryugu and map the distribution of these biorelevant molecules with unprecedented detail.
Using a novel electron-microscopy-based combination of vibrational and core-level spectroscopy, we disentangle the chemistry and nanoscale petrography of these organics. We show that some of these organics contain soluble and highly aliphatic components as well as NHx functional groups, that must have formed in outer solar nebula environments before parent body incorporation.
These novel coordinated analyses will open up new avenues of research on these types of precious and rare asteroidal dust samples.
Vibrational EELS of the diffuse N-containing OM in lamella A0461-01-FIB01 with extracted maps and spectra. a – HAADF overview of the diffuse OM area with three different regions marked. b – Extracted map of the “pure” OM component (1). c – Extracted map of the diffuse OM intermingled with fine phyllosilicates (2). d – Extracted map of the surrounding phyllosilicates (3). e – RGB colored overlay map of the three components. f – Vibrational EEL spectra of the OM regions marked in (a). The intermingled OM-fine phyllosilicates (2) show an additional faint band at ~ 0.4 eV. g – Map of the O-H stretch showing mainly phyllosilicates. h – Map of the C-H stretch showing mainly diffuse OM. i – Combined map of the two components. The maps were produced by multi-linear least squares fitting of the spectra in panel f, and for energy ranges b – d 0.05 – 0.25 eV and g,h 0.3 – 0.5 eV, respectively. For the maps g,h only the spectra from regions 1 and 3 were used. — astro-ph.EP
Christian Vollmer, Demie Kepaptsoglou, Johannes Lier, Aleksander B. Mosberg, Quentin M. Ramasse
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2506.16798 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2506.16798v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.16798
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Submission history
From: Christian Vollmer
[v1] Fri, 20 Jun 2025 07:30:12 UTC (2,168 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16798
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry, Astrogeology,
