Which Molecules Get to Sit

Frye-Jones and the MagLab people rinsed Murchison and Aguas Zarcas in four solvents, methanol down to toluene, then weighed the wash on a 21-tesla mass spectrometer and drew the rings with an AFM tip that held one carbon monoxide molecule.

More than sixty-six thousand unique formulas from Murchison. Over ninety-one thousand from Aguas Zarcas. Less than one percent overlapped between the methanol and toluene extracts.

For decades the looking stopped at glycine and uracil. The rest sat as soluble organic matter, unnamed.

Building blocks is a late mouth. Life’s precursors is a late mouth. Glycine-and-uracil is a late mouth once the looking stopped there and called the rest an oil field under the named stones.

Looking is the wash that finally names what sat, and the seat each solvent keeps for a different crowd.

The leftover is both: the reservoir that was already there while we washed for the few familiar names, and the solvent that decides which molecules get to sit at the table.