SEEKING THE ORIGINS OF LIFE
BIO
Dr Queenie Hoi Shan Chan
Chan is a planetary scientist whose research focuses on investigating early chemical reactions involving liquid water in the Solar System and how the complex molecules that ultimately led to life formed. Chan’s work enables her to analyse some of the most pristine samples of comets and asteroids returned by space missions such as JAXA’s Hayabusa.
Why do we have to look at asteroids in space rather than breaking open a meteorite on Earth?
We have already learned so much from meteorite analysis. Meteorites bombard us every day, and we’ve collected thousands of meteorites on Earth. People spend time studying meteorites in every single detail in laboratories, and they’re available in a much larger amount – not just tiny specks, but large rocks of meteorites – so you’ve got a lot more material to study. If you want to look at things like water and organics, it’s better to have a lot more organic material to study, because they don’t really come in large amounts, so you usually need to concentrate on them to be able to study them.
We have learnt so much about organics and water from meteorite studies in the
