The red color of the Great Spot has stimulated some interesting theories. The chemical department at the American University of Maryland has one of the few laboratories in the world in which attempts have been made to experimentally reproduce the conditions that triggered the birth of life on the Earth. Cyril Ponnamperuma, the director of that laboratory, works with special glass vials, into which he injects a series of simple gases which are assumed to have been present in the Earth's primordial atmosphere. He then subjected these gases to various energy sources (electric discharges as generated by lightening, ultraviolet radiation like from the Sun), to see if this were enough to go from methane, ammonia and water vapor to the more complex molecules that were the building blocks of life. The composition of the Earth's primordial atmosphere is not so certain. One of the possible models might be Jupiter, if it is true that this gas giant is delayed in some way with respect to our own planet and reproduces conditions that on the Earth were faced and overcome billions of years ago. When Ponnamperuma introduced the chemical substances found in Jupiter's atmosphere into the test tube, in other words hydrogen, methane and ammonia, and then set off a series of electric discharges with the intention of reproducing the lightening that is certainly present in Jupiter's atmosphere, the mixture suddenly began to turn red and a substance with this color deposited on the sides of the tube. Immediately analyzed, this substance was found to be very interesting: it was nitrile, an organic compound which, if mixed with water, that Pioneer and Voyager also demonstrated to exist on Jupiter, produces nucleic acids, the basic components of living matter. The analysis of the data collected by the Voyager probes, which will probably continue for many years, will also tell us if the Red Spot does in fact contain this compound. If it does, besides the laboratories in Maryland, we would have an enormous natural laboratory where we could try to understand the steps that inert material took to become living matter.
The red color of the Great Spot has stimulated some interesting theories. The chemical department at the American University of Maryland has one of the few laboratories in the world in which attempts have been made to experimentally reproduce the conditions that triggered the birth of life on the Earth. Cyril Ponnamperuma, the director of that laboratory, works with special glass vials, into which he injects a series of simple gases which are assumed to have been present in the Earth's primordial atmosphere. He then subjected these gases to various energy sources (electric discharges as generated by lightening, ultraviolet radiation like from the Sun), to see if this were enough to go from methane, ammonia and water vapor to the more complex molecules that were the building blocks of life. The composition of the Earth's primordial atmosphere is not so certain. One of the possible models might be Jupiter, if it is true that this gas giant is delayed in some way with respect to our own planet and reproduces conditions that on the Earth were faced and overcome billions of years ago. When Ponnamperuma introduced the chemical substances found in Jupiter's atmosphere into the test tube, in other words hydrogen, methane and ammonia, and then set off a series of electric discharges with the intention of reproducing the lightening that is certainly present in Jupiter's atmosphere, the mixture suddenly began to turn red and a substance with this color deposited on the sides of the tube. Immediately analyzed, this substance was found to be very interesting: it was nitrile, an organic compound which, if mixed with water, that Pioneer and Voyager also demonstrated to exist on Jupiter, produces nucleic acids, the basic components of living matter. The analysis of the data collected by the Voyager probes, which will probably continue for many years, will also tell us if the Red Spot does in fact contain this compound. If it does, besides the laboratories in Maryland, we would have an enormous natural laboratory where we could try to understand the steps that inert material took to become living matter.
